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How a High Dollar Speech Sends a former Israeli Prime
Minister to US Federal Court on Claims of War Crimes
By Ann Wright
Serving legal
documents on high visibility persons who have been involved in
international criminal acts is very difficult. However, the temptation
of large honoraria for speeches in the United States tripped up a
former Israeli Prime Minister who has been accused of war crimes for
his involvement in the murders of ten passengers (nine were killed
immediately and a seriously wounded passenger died after being in a
coma for several years) on the Mavi Marmara in the 2010 Gaza Freedom
Flotilla.
In a telephone press
conference on October 21, the international legal team that filed the
lawsuit against former Israeli Prime Minister and Minister of Defense
Ehud Barak described how “legal process service” or official
notification of a legal claim filed against him was done. The legal
team knew Barak would be in Southern California giving three talks as a
part of the Distinguished Speaker Series of Southern California and
hired a commercial “certified process server” to deliver the court
documents to Barak.
According to
attorney Dan Stormer of the Los Angeles law firm Hadsell Stormer Renick
LLP,on the evening of October 20 when Barak was scheduled to give a
lecture in Thousand Oaks, California, the process server handed the
documents to one of Barak’s security team who, in the view of
witnesses, handed the documents to Barak, thereby completing the
official notification of Barak that a civil case against him had been
filed in U.S. Federal Court.
On Friday, October
15, 2015, attorneys for U.S. citizen Furkan Dogan, a 19 year old U.S.
citizen who was shot 5 times by Israeli commandos, had filed a civil
lawsuit in the Federal District court of California, Central
Division, against Barak for his role as Defense Minister in the
2010 Israeli Defense Forces raid on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla ship Mavi
Marmara that resulted in the executions of nine unarmed civilian
passengers and wounding of over 50 passengers, one of whom died after
being in a coma for several years. The lawsuit was filed using Alien
Tort Claims, Torture Prevention and Anti-Terrorists legislation.
The legal
documents filed in Federal District Court state: “Defendant Barak
is responsible and liable for the common plan, design, and scheme
unlawfully to attack the six vessels of theGaza Freedom Flotilla and
the civilian passengers on board which constituted acts of international
terrorism and resulted in extrajudicial killings, torture, and cruel
inhumane or other degrading treatment, in violation of customary
international law.
Defendant Barak’s
position as Israeli’s Minister of Defense provided him with the ability
and capacity to plan, direct, control and oversee the operation against
the Flotilla and the IDF soldiers who conducted the attack. Therefore
Defendant Barak possessed command responsibility over the IDF forces,
and knew or should have known that the unlawful attack on the Flotilla
would result in torts and international law violations against
Plaintiffs. Defendant Barak failed to stop the violations before and
during the attack, and failed to punish those responsible for
committing the violations after the attack, thereby ratifying their
conduct.”
Attorney Stormer
said that Barak must respond to the lawsuit within 30 days after which
the discovery phase of the lawsuit will begin. Stormer said that if the
suit is successful, damages and compensation to the parents of Furkan
Dogan, could amount to “tens of millions of dollars.” Stormer said that
other families of those executed by the Israeli commandos may join the
lawsuit.
British lawyer
Rodney Dixon said that having Barak served the legal process in
California was a “watershed” moment. Dixon said that the Nuremburg,
Tokyo, Yugoslavia and Sierra Leone war crimes trials demonstrate that
political leaders who order the targeting and killing of unarmed
civilians can be held accountable.
In September 2009,
lawyers representing 16 Palestinians living in Britain asked a London
court to issue an arrest warrant for Barak who was speaking in Britain
for his role in the deaths of hundreds of unarmed Palestinians in Gaza
who were killed in the Israeli 29 day attack on Gaza in December
2008-January 2009. However, the court ruled
that Barak enjoyed diplomatic immunity from prosecution as he was in
office at the time.
Legal team attorney
Haydee Dijkstal, who is a lawyer in The Hague, the Netherlands, said
during the press conference that “there is no protection for officials
who have left office” and the lawsuit against Barak could not be thrown
out by the U.S. court on grounds of diplomatic immunity.
Several members of
the George W. Bush administration do not travel to certain countries in
Europe due to lawsuits
filed against them in Germany, France, Spain and Switzerland for their
roles the war on terror and torture.
About
the Author: Ann Wright served 29 years in the US Army/Army Reserves and
retired as a Colonel. She was a US diplomat for 16 years in US
Embassies in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan,
Sierra Leone, Micronesia, Afghanistan and Mongolia. She was a passenger
on the 2010 Gaza Freedom Flotilla, and on the 2011 and 2015 flotillas.
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