A Turkish prosecutor has open a case against the Israeli officials who approved the attack on the Gaza flotilla and the Turkish ship, Mavi Marmara, which left 9 Turkish nationals dead:
Israel’s prime minister, defense minister and chief of General Staff are among the prime suspects in an investigation initiated by the İstanbul Bakırköy Prosecutor’s Office into Monday’s military operation against a Gaza-bound civilian aid flotilla that left nine peace activists, all of whom were Turkish citizens, dead.
…If the prosecutor’s office can compile enough evidence against Israel at the end of its probe, it will charge Israeli officials with various crimes, including murder, injury, taking hostages, attacking Turkish citizens on the open seas and piracy. The main suspects in the investigation thus far are Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Chief of General Staff Gabi Ashkenazi.
…Turkey’s foreign and justice ministries are also closely following the investigation, which might end up with the indictment of those responsible for the raid. The trial of these suspects will be based on the international Law of the Sea Convention and universal principles regarding a fair trial.
What’s important about this development is not any imminent threat that Israeli leaders will end up in a Turkish prison. But that this begins a process of pressuring Israel through the use of the judicial process, much as the Goldstone Report pressured Israel regarding Operation Cast Lead. It will be yet another method by which to bring to the world’s attention the nature of the crime that Israel committed against Turkey and its citizens. This is how one builds a broader case too to appeal to the international community for accountability for Israel’s actions, insisting on the applicability of international law and the laws of war.
The battle against Israel’s Gaza policy is multi-pronged. No one issue will break the dam, but when all are pressed together then the dam may be breached.
Today, brings news that a single Israeli commando killed six of the 9 who died that night. The soldier is being considered for a medal for bravery. What I hope is that my IDF veteran friends with Breaking the Silence and Combatants for Peace will identity this individual and send him pictures of the men he killed along with their families and perhaps pictures of their dead bodies. These will include the noted Turkish photographer Cevdet Kılıçlar, whose images will break your heart, knowing he will no longer be among the us to capture, with such incredible delicacy and dignity, the faces of his subjects. They also include Furkan Dogan, the 19 year old Turkish-American who hoped to attend medical school.
By the way, I’d like to know why the IDF found it necessary to murder a photographer shooting pictures of the scene on board, putting a bullet right between his eyes. Undoubtedly, they preferred having no documentary record of the massacre. Will we ever see the images Cevdet Kılıçlar shot that night? Perhaps we’ll even see an image of his executioner the moment before death. Or perhaps the IDF has already destroyed the evidence much as the CIA destroyed videotapes of its own torture sessions involving Al Qaeda suspects.
phtographs of the siezed IDF soldiers on the Marmara are now published in the Turkish press:
http://fotogaleri.hurriyet.com.tr/GaleriDetay.aspx?cid=36575&p=7&rid=2
All I can see in these pictures are some guys have been roughed up a little, pretty much like the IDF would roughen up Palestinian civilians in their homes during house searches, and one of them is calling for his mommy.
Since Israel has confiscated the videos (and stills?) taken by the flotilla activists, unless and until it returns them (and the return is verified by the activists who remain alive), no images prepared by Israel should be taken as “evidence” of anything that occurred during the fatal boarding party on the well-known legal principle regarding “spoliation of evidence” (whereby a party which has control of another party’s evidence and destroys or withholds it is punished (during litigation) sometimes by having the opposing party’s claims “deemed” sustained by the missing evidence.
Spot on Pabelmont. The PR machine is doing everything to ensure that the Victims are counted as terrorists
It is not only the press making this claim, but it is being done at the behest of Netanyahu, who is still busy making incendiary public declarations smearing the reputations not only of the dead but of all the people on the flotilla, as well as the Free Gaza organization itself. He is repeatedly using the words “terrorism” and “terrorists” to describe them.
Only a lunatic state would decorate a soldier for shooting unarmed civilians in the back of the head, for one thing. Doing so without making any attempt to investigate the incident is doubly disgusting.
“The trial of these suspects will be based on the international Law of the Sea Convention and universal principles regarding a fair trial. What’s important about this development is not any imminent threat that Israeli leaders will end up in a Turkish prison.”
It won’t be that simple. If the suspects don’t submit themselves to international law, Turkey could justifiably resort to applying Israel’s Law of Targeted Killings. I can’t imagine anyone outside Israel losing any sleep over it if that is the only remaining course to redress.
See:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/the-hijacking-of-the-truth-film-evidence-destroyed-1992517.html
Can’t comment on the veracity of this, but the Independent is usually fairly good.
There are some bodies which have not been returned: these may be the ones with wounds at an impossible angle (ie: in the top of the head) for anyone engaging them from the same level, unless they were already lying down.
A death list would change EVERYONE’s perception of what this incident was and its significance.
But precisely because there is so much at stake, and precisely because the IDF does seem to have got its nuclear forces into the Arabian Gulf, Medawar would prefer slow deliberate moves to any quick ones.
The only way a diesel electric boat gets from Israel to the Arabian Gulf, is via the Suez Canal and Red Sea. Round the Cape of Good Hope is too far, unless President Zuma lets the sub, or its support ship, into Simonstown. J.W. Vorster might have done, but the past is another beloved country. The Suez Canal is its only possible route back home, too. Seems that Egypt could defuse the situation by only letting them back, and not allowing them to send a replacement boat when the current one needs dockyard maintenance and a crew change, which it will. We’re talking about a less than forty man crew with none of the comforts or facilities of a Vanguard or Ohio class boat with a crew three times the size. Six month submerged patrols are not within their capability.
There’s no realistic chance of them running the canal submerged with the Egyptian navy trying to stop them.
Does anyone else remember the incident where the Norwegians forced aground and captured a Russian diesel-electric submarine with nuclear warhead components hidden in the bilges under the torpedo room? The chances of this being repeated would seem so high, that Medawar thinks that some part of the “revelation” might be misinformation or misdirection.
If the range of the missile on the IDF submarines is as billed, then they should be able to hit Iranian targets from the Med, near the Syrian or Lebanese coast, with a small fraction of the risk of what’s supposed to be going on. Any boat actually in the Arabian Gulf, therefore, would not be a “shooter” but actually be there for early warning of an Iranian strike, with the nuclear-armed boat deep and safe off Sardinia or Corsica, where Arab navies do not patrol, until it was required to move to a launch position.
But this is a navy run by Colonels and who knows what seems rational to them?
Israelis have gone off the deep end. The global community needs to stop them in their tracks before something catastrophic happens.
Something catastrophic already has happened. Except the US and the Israelis are calling it a “public relations disaster.”
I remember reading a while back about the Israeli subs with nuclear weapons passing through the Suez canal… Egypt was aware and, apparently, appreciative of the token payment.
Egypt is truly defanged as an independent state. One of the reasonable reasons for which is their fear of a threatened Israeli attack on the High Aswan Dam, about which Egypt could do nothing.
This incident further highlights Israel as a terrorist entity !
The article itself should make clear that this was not a death list, unless you actually believe that Israel planned to kill an 88 year old priest. Sounds to me like it was a list of VIPs who were to be treated with kid gloves.
Sheikh Salah’s name was on the list. They treated him with such kid gloves that he was arrested and interrogated by the Shin Bet immediately on disembarkation as a dangerous enemy of the State (he’s a citizen btw). If that’s kid gloves, we don’t need to know what termination with extreme prejudice would mean.
richard, according the the tehran times
http://www.tehrantimes.com/index_View.asp?code=220794
for the past year, Kiliçlar has been employed by the ihh
he was not an independent journalist
From Lawrence of Cyberia, an impeccably researched blog:
I said he was a photojournalist, not an “independent journalist.” I didn’t say he was currently a photojournalist. Nor is it impossible for someone employed by an NGO to also be a photojournalist while he works for the NGO. At any rate, his role on board the ship was to provide a photographic record of the journey, which is why he and an Indonesian photographer were both murdered.
so you will provide evidence that he was not among the group that attacked the commandos
Who is “he?” If you’re referring to the Turkish photographer, it’s a bit hard for a man with a piece of sophisticated digital equipment attached to his eye to attack anyone. His job was to photograph, not beat people up. And further, he was a professional journalist. They’re not known for taking sticks & beating people. But hey, if you have any evidence to the contrary, bring it as they say.
I don’t know if it’s just me but I find yr comments inane, and not pertinent to any serious discussion. So unless you can find some gravitas I may start either ignoring or not publishing yr comments. Let’s have a good serious discussion w. give & take. That means you think of intelligent things to say. OK?
I assume by give & take you mean, Joe gives his opinion on a subject, often legitimate criticism, and you take his ability to comment?
I’ve read legitimate criticism of my pt of view here periodically by a few commenters who actually think & can express their views cogently. Believe me he is not among them. Snark does not pass for “legitimate criticism.”
[comment deleted for violation of comment rules]
I’ve deleted yr comment because I have absolutely no interest in discussing with you how I manage this blog, how I debate with commenters & why I do so in the manner I do. No one here has any interest in these issues (except you). Not to mention that the issues you raise are off-topic. If you have anything pertinent to say about the topics covered by my posts you are welcome to do so. Anything else is a violation of comment rules.
You’re entitled to feel that I manage this blog unfairly, treat you badly, etc. But that doesn’t mean anyone else has any interest in reading about it.
It’s interesting, isn’t it Mary, that whenever Israel does something truly awful, the American media only sees it as a ‘public relations disaster’?
Kind of maybe unfortunate a bit about that dead boy Furkan, but it’s an historic tragedy that some newspapers noticed his murder.
There is no morality, only comparative leverage over the eternally to-be-duped public.
Imagine it, if an Iranian ship hijacked a boatload of Israeli civilians and killed nine of them, and injured 25 more. A tad bit more than a PR problem, no?
There are, I understand, still 6 missing. Who are the missing 6? Why? Why is no-one asking?
Every morning, I start my day by looking around the internet for news about them. And like you, I am frustrated about the fact that there is no information, and frustrated about the fact that this lack of information is apparently no news.
I wish I knew something, whether the missing people are Turkish or where they are from. There are stories of IOF throwing bodies overboard. Why isn’t anyone screaming about this? The politicians are turning my stomach, literally. When are these investigations supposed to begin? six months from now???
About the missing:
http://www.jjvanka.net/imag/ptv_cdnflot08.htm
Did I miss something on this video, JJ? There is nothing about the missing people at all on it.
Mary.
The six still missing must have wounds inconsistent with the IDF’s narrative.
The IRA have long given misleading information about where they buried certain bodies , because they simply do not want them subjected to an autopsy that would tarry their carefully-cultivated heroic myths with sordid reality.
The IDF are getting more like the IRA by the day. They’ll probably introduce penny whistles to their military bands next.