A MAN who could have given key evidence about war crimes committed by Israeli leader Ariel Sharon was murdered last week. He is the third person connected with the case who has died in suspicious circumstances in the last two months.

Sharon could be indicted by a Belgian court for his role in the 1982 massacres at the Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps in Lebanon. Israeli troops and right wing Phalangist militiamen combined to murder up to 1,700 Palestinian civilians.

Israel's former friends in the right wing militias have said they might be prepared to testify against Sharon. Then they started to die. On New Year's Day Jean Ghanem drove his car into a tree and died after two weeks in a coma. Later the same month Phalangist leader Elie Hobeika was blown up by a car bomb. He had agreed to testify against Sharon 24 hours earlier. Then last week Michael Nasser, a former associate of Hobeika, was shot dead in Brazil by a man firing a silencer-equipped pistol.