https://arab.news/vcumh
- Report compiled by Hague-based UK lawyers will be handed to Metropolitan Police
- 鈥楤ritish nationals are under a legal obligation not to collude with crimes committed in Palestine鈥�
LONDON: A group of UK citizens who served with the Israeli military in Gaza will be the subject of a war crimes complaint handed to the Metropolitan Police, The Guardian reported on Monday.
A 240-page dossier compiled by a group of lawyers based in The Hague documents the activities of 10 Brits in Gaza, with complaints against them including alleged targeting of civilians and aid workers, coordinated attacks on hospitals and protected sites, and the forced displacement of people.
The dossier, which covers the period from October 2023 to May 2024 and took six months to compile, will be handed to the Met鈥檚 war crimes unit.
The complaint against the 10 Brits, who cannot be named for legal reasons, will be brought on behalf of the Gaza-based Palestinian Centre for Human Rights and the UK-based Public Interest Law Centre.
The dossier includes eyewitness testimony from civilians in Gaza. One passage features evidence from a witness who recalled an attack on a hospital, including seeing corpses 鈥渟cattered on the ground, especially in the middle of the hospital courtyard, where many dead bodies were buried in a mass grave.鈥�
The account added that a bulldozer being used to demolish part of the hospital 鈥渞an over a dead body in a horrific and heart-wrenching scene desecrating the dead.鈥�
Raji Sourani, director of the PCHR, said: 鈥淭his is illegal, this is inhuman and enough is enough. The government cannot say we didn鈥檛 know; we are providing them with all the evidence.鈥�
PILC legal director Paul Heron said: 鈥淲e鈥檙e filing our report to make clear these war crimes are not in our name.鈥�
The 2001 International Criminal Court Act says it 鈥渋s an offence against the law of England and Wales for a person to commit genocide, a crime against humanity, or a war crime.鈥�
Michael Mansfield KC, the lawyer leading the group, said: 鈥淚f one of our nationals is committing an offence, we ought to be doing something about it. Even if we can鈥檛 stop the government of foreign countries behaving badly, we can at least stop our nationals from behaving badly.
鈥淏ritish nationals are under a legal obligation not to collude with crimes committed in Palestine. No one is above the law.鈥�
Sean Summerfield, a barrister who also worked on the dossier, said: 鈥淭he public will be shocked, I would have thought, to hear that there鈥檚 credible evidence that Brits have been directly involved in committing some of those atrocities.鈥�
More than 50,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since October 2023.