Former Israeli Minister of Health Danny Naveh discussed the decision by some Israeli lawmakers and diplomats to sue Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in The Hague for violating the 1948 U.N. Genocide Convention, to which Iran is a signatory.
"From our preliminary assessment, there's no question that Ahmadinejad
violated the genocide convention, which specifically addresses the issue of incitement to genocide," Dore Gold, former Israeli Ambassador to the UN said. The following conversation with Naveh took place this morning on 103FM Radio in Israel:
MR. NAVEH: Look, the United Nations made a decision - made a pact after the Holocaust. This pact deals with prevention and punishment for crimes involving genocide. The question is whether we need to wait, heaven forbid, for a crime of this kind to happen before we file a lawsuit in the International Court in The Hague. I think every one of us agrees that we should not wait. We have a unique phenomenon with the president of Iran, Ahmedinejad, who is calling for and moving towards erasing Israel from the map. He not only calls for it, but actually is making practical preparations -
Q: So what is the claim for putting him on trial in the court in The Hague?
MR. NAVEH: What is happening now is that there is a team of lawyers and diplomats that is working diligently to prepare a legal case in order to file a lawsuit against the president of Iran and against other partners of his in the Iranian government, according to Paragraph 9 regarding the pact for prevention of genocidal crime. This application to the International Court in The Hague against the president of Iran and his people is under the claim that indeed there is a country here - there are country leaders that are making preparations for genocide and they are inciting genocide. This is utterly opposed to the international treaty.
Q: I understand that the advantage is mainly explanatory, because in a practical sense the chances are slim.
MR. NAVEH: Listen, I do not know what the legal chances are in this sense. It is really an unprecedented thing. Since this pact was made by the UN General Assembly in 1948, nobody has attempted to sue the head of a country in this aspect or in this way. Therefore, I think there is some sort of legal precedent.
For this purpose, we are recruiting world-renowned lawyers, not only lawyers known here in Israel. The person coordinating the work here in Israel is Dr. Meir Rosen, who was the legal adviser of the Foreign Ministry, and together with him is Dr. Dore Gold who was the chairman of the Foreign Ministry amongst other things. This is a legal precedent that we will put to the test.
In any case, surely there is also a political explanatory advantage. We need to put pressure around the world on the Iranian government. And in addition to this legal claim, we will do other things - assembling an international forum which will include Parliament members and American Congressmen, and lobbies of other parliaments around the world in order to check out the laws of other countries. We will look into whether it is possible to sue the president of Iran according to the laws of different countries against denial of the Holocaust and other actions.
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