Belgium: Sharon war crimes suit can go ahead

BRUSSELS, Belgium (Reuters) --Belgium's supreme appeals court has ruled that a genocide lawsuit against Ariel Sharon can go ahead once he no longer enjoys immunity as prime minister of Israel, the plaintiffs' lawyer said.

The ruling opens the way for survivors of a 1982 massacre of Palestinian refugees to press their case against the Israeli leader, whom they hold responsible for the deaths of hundreds of their kin in Israeli-occupied Beirut.

"This is a victory for international justice and for the victims," Luc Walleyn, one of lawyers for the plaintiffs, told Reuters at the courthouse.

The survivors had appealed against a lower court ruling in June that Sharon could not be prosecuted for the massacre by Israeli-backed Christian militiamen in the Sabra and Shatila camps because he was not in Belgium.

The plaintiffs are using a Belgian human rights law which claims universal jurisdiction allowing the country's courts to try crimes against humanity and genocide, no matter where they were committed.

Sharon was defense minister at the time of the massacre. In 1983, an Israeli commission found him indirectly responsible, but, Sharon was never prosecuted.

Daniel Shek, the Israeli Foreign Ministry's director of European Affairs, described the ruling as "very problematic."

"The Belgian legal system is trying to bite off more than it can swallow," he said.

The case has soured relations between Belgium and Israel for more than a year.