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Photo: AFP
Gaza protests
Photo: AFP

UN picks American to lead investigation into Gaza protest killings

David Crane, who is to lead the three-person Commission of Inquiry, is a law professor at Syracuse University, with over 30 years’ experience in the US federal government; he indicted, among others, the President of Liberia, Charles Taylor.

A former senior US legal official, David Crane, will lead a UN investigation into violence in Gaza, the United Nations said on Wednesday.

 

 

At least 140 Palestinians have been killed by the IDF during violent protest on the Gaza border in recent months, with demonstrators launching incendiary balloons and kites into southern Israel.

 

One Israeli soldier, Staff Sgt. Aviv Levi, was killed during the weekly protests that began on March 30, and thousands of acres of farmland have been incinerated by the tide of flaming kites and balloons that the IDF has so far not managed to stem.

 

 (Photo: AFP)
(Photo: AFP)

The UN Human Rights Council voted in May to set up the probe into the killings, to the fury of Israel, which said it was being demonized while the violent activities of the Gaza-ruling Hamas terror group were being overlooked.

 

An Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman on Wednesday declined immediate comment.

 

 (Photo: Reuters)
(Photo: Reuters)

 

Israel, with its long history of not cooperating with UN human rights inquiries or allowing them access to Gaza, decries what it says is a disproportionate number of discussion items and resolutions against it, the conclusions of which it suspects are predetermined and biased.

 

Crane, who leads the three-person Commission of Inquiry, is a law professor at Syracuse University who the UN said had over 30 years' experience in the US federal government, including as Senior Inspector General in the Department of Defense.

 

 (Photo: AFP)
(Photo: AFP)

 

"Professor Crane served as Chief Prosecutor of the Special Court for Sierra Leone from April 2002 until 15 July 2005, during which period he indicted, among others, the then-President of Liberia, Charles Taylor," a UN statement said.

 

His co-commissioners will be Sara Hossain, a Bangladeshi barrister who formerly worked on UN investigations into human rights in North Korea, and Kaari Betty Murungi, a board member of the Kenya Human Rights Commission and previously a legal adviser at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.

 

The commissioners will present a final written report in March next year.

 

Staff Sgt. Aviv Levi
Staff Sgt. Aviv Levi

 

The UN special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, Nickolay Mladenov, told the UN Security Council on Tuesday that he had visited Gaza over the past week in an urgent effort to de-escalate tensions.

 

"I appealed to Palestinian factions not to provoke incidents at the fence, to immediately stop the firing of rockets and mortars and to stop the incendiary kites and balloons. And I appealed to Israel to reopen the crossings, stop shelling, particularly in populated areas, and to exercise restraint towards Gaza," he said.

 

"Over the last two weeks however the situation quickly spiralled out of control, nearly to a point of no-return."

 

Intense efforts by the United Nations and Egypt had calmed the situation, Mladenov said, but only in the short-term.

 


פרסום ראשון: 07.25.18, 19:37
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