US protected Sharon from prosecution for war crimes: Analyst
A political analyst says the United States has shielded former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon from prosecution for his war crimes, particularly about the massacre in Sabra and Shatila, Press TV reports.
It is important to remind that there was a serious initiative in 2002 by the government of Belgium to investigate the massacre in Sabra and Shatila where Sharon oversaw and planned those 143 hours of slaughter and that case was going forward, Franklin Lamb said.
“But as we now know it was Donald Rumsfeld at that time the Secretary of Defense
in Washington that saved Sharon from that appointment with justice by threatening Belgium to pull NATO out of Brussels in Belgium if they continue with that trial,†he added.
The political commentator believed that holding Sharon accountable for his criminal acts was not in the interests of any big power and said, “That’s not new in the sense that we regularly deal with tyrants.â€
“So I think forever, in memory now, the name Ariel Sharon, his punishment in a sense, is that he’s condemned for eternity in history and whatever his situation in an afterlife. So that’s a kind of justice, but I can see that it’s weak,†Lamb pointed out.
Sharon, known to many Palestinians as ‘The Butcher,’ died on Saturday at the age of 85.
He died at Sheba Medical Center near Tel Aviv, where he had been in a coma since 2006, when he was hit by a stroke.