See you in court, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad / By Adi Schwartz

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http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/754691.html

See you in court, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad /  By Adi Schwartz

  Next month, a new element will be introduced into the discussions 
about the international community's attitude toward Iran, which is 
becoming a nuclear power. A group of Israelis, headed by former UN 
ambassador Dr. Dore Gold, recently completed the composition of a 
lawsuit to be referred to the International Criminal Court in The 
Hague against Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, for incitement 
to genocide.

  The lawsuit, whose main points are being published here for the 
first time, is based on the 1948 UN Convention for the Prevention and 
Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, one of the most important 
conventions in international law. The convention was written after 
the Second World War, in order to prevent the repetition of cases of 
genocide such as the destruction of the Jews by the Nazis. According 
to the convention, "direct and public incitement to committing 
genocide" is a criminal offense, with genocide defined as an activity 
"committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, 
ethnic, racial or religious group." In first place among the list of 
crimes enumerated by the convention is "Killing members of the group."

  Aside from Gold, the group includes Meir Rosenne, former legal 
adviser to the Foreign Ministry and Israeli ambassador to France and 
the U.S.; Eytan Bentsur, former director general of the Foreign 
Ministry; and MK Danny Naveh. The four share the opinion that the 
words repeatedly uttered by the Iranian president regarding the 
destruction of Israel and erasing it from the map are a distinct 
violation of the Genocide Convention, aside from being a violation of 
the convention of the UN itself, which prohibits a member nation from 
calling for the destruction of another member nation.

  Time to attack

  "There are things about which we must not be silent and that we must 
not ignore," says Gold, today chair of the Jerusalem Center for 
Public Affairs, which is coordinating the lawsuit as a 
nongovernmental organization. "The time has come to go on the legal 
attack. As a citizen and a former diplomat, who was witness to the 
fact that Israel was under attack for years in the area of 
humanitarian international law, I believe that we must no longer 
remain silent, particularly in light of the blatant violation of the 
Genocide Convention, which is the most important of the UN 
conventions."

  Rosenne, today a private attorney, says that this is not a political 
act. "It is easy to imagine what would happen if Israel announced 
that it desired to destroy another country," says Rosenne. "Sanctions 
against it would be applied immediately. Were the threat only 
theoretical, we could live with it. But we are talking here about a 
country of about 70 million people, which is increasingly arming 
itself, and in addition is arming organizations that it sponsors, 
such as Hezbollah, which are acting directly against Israel. In other 
words, this has practical implications. It is simply astonishing that 
the president of a country that is a UN member makes such 
declarations and nobody in the international community reacts, except 
with polite words."

  The lawsuit says that the name of the convention - the Convention 
for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide - 
testifies to the fact that its intention is to prevent genocide. For 
that reason, in order to prevent conflict and bloodshed, the court is 
requested to discuss the lawsuit. The document points out that 
according to the convention, incitement is a crime in itself, and 
there is no need to wait until genocide takes place in order to 
convict for incitement to genocide.

  The lawsuit spells out the history of the relations between Iran and 
Israel, and particularly their deterioration since the 1979 Islamic 
Revolution. Strong words against Israel have been uttered over the 
years, but Ahmadinejad has brought them to a peak in his specific 
calls for destroying Israel. Gold says that the suit will give about 
20 examples of such calls (which the president of Iran managed to 
utter in the course of only one year since becoming president), 
including his declaration in 2005 that "Israel should be wiped off 
the map," or a statement from August 2006 to the effect that the 
solution to the crisis in the Middle East is "the destruction of the 
Zionist regime." In 2005 the Iranian president convened a congress in 
Tehran called The World Without Zionism. There is no question about 
the public and direct nature of these words, and according to the 
suit, the State of Israel and its population are considered a 
national entity.

  "I relate to these threats in all seriousness," says Irit Kahan, 
former head of the department of international law in the State 
Prosecutors Office, who supports the initiative to prosecute 
Ahmadinejad. "We have here a specific threat to eliminate a country. 
The man is also a serial Holocaust denier, who makes no effort to 
hide that fact. This is a phenomenon that cannot be ignored."

  Gold explains that Ahmadinejad differs from previous leaders of Arab 
or Muslim countries. "In the past, with Nasser for example, the 
expression focused on criticism, as harsh as it may have been, of the 
Israeli government or of Zionism," says Gold. "But here there is a 
call to wipe out the population living in Israel. These are two 
entirely different things. Aside from that, since the 1990s, and 
particularly since the terrible failures of the UN in Rwanda and 
Yugoslavia, the international community has been paying special 
attention to the issue of genocide. The subject of genocide is 
blazing in the consciousness of jurists and diplomats, and therefore 
the ground is much more fertile for discussing such issues."

  The main precedents offered in the lawsuit come from the 
International Tribunal for Rwanda, which convicted nine people of 
incitement to genocide. The most prominent of them was the former 
prime minister of Rwanda, Jean Kambanda, who was sentenced to life 
imprisonment for the special role he played when speaking in the name 
of the government at public events and in the media, engaging in 
direct and public incitement to commit acts of violence against 
moderate Tutsi and Hutu. The lawsuit points out that Kambanda's 
status as a head of state did not grant him immunity.

  A well-known incident from the Rwanda tribunal was that of three 
journalists who were accused of genocide because of their 
exhortations on the "Radio Machete" radio station, to the tune of 
"Let's destroy them" and "Get to work!" meaning "Go and murder!" In 
the lawsuit it is claimed that while this case requires attention to 
the context in which the words were said in order to conclude that 
this was incitement to murder, Ahmadinejad's calls are specific and 
require no interpretation.

  New coalitions

  The main obstacle to putting Ahmadinejad on trial is technical, and 
stems from legal and political circumstances. Legally speaking, the 
main problem is that Iran is not a signatory to the Rome Convention 
on the International Criminal Court, which sits in The Hague and is 
supposed to mediate the lawsuit. Therefore, the ICC has no power to 
try Iranian citizens.

  Jurists say that there are two ways of bypassing this obstacle. One 
is by turning to the UN Security Council, which is allowed to refer 
such cases to the Chief Prosecutor in The Hague. In such a case, 
there is no importance to the question of whether Iran is a signatory 
to the ICC convention; this was the method used, for example, in the 
case of the genocide in Darfur (Sudan is not a signatory, either). A 
second possibility is for a country that is a member of the 
convention (not Israel, which is not a signatory) or a 
nongovernmental organization (such as the Jerusalem Center for Public 
Affairs) to refer the case to the Chief Prosecutor, who is permitted 
in exceptional cases to begin an investigation. The question of 
whether the UN Security Council will refer the case to the Chief 
Prosecutor in The Hague depends on the international interests of 
countries like Russia and China, which are liable to cast a veto 
against such a proposal.

  "Our explicit goal is to conduct a discussion in an international 
legal forum on the matter of the Iranian president," says Danny 
Naveh, who believes that even discussing the issue and bringing it 
before international public opinion are very important.

  Gold explains that to date, the discussion on Iran has focused on 
security and economic questions, such as the nuclear project and the 
oil industry. "Here there is an entirely new angle of blatant 
violation of an international convention," he says. "This is an 
opportunity to create new and strong coalitions on the Iranian issue. 
At present, for the most part those who are speaking against Iran are 
identified as rightists, conservatives, or Republicans in the case of 
the United States. Introducing the element of genocide can also lead 
to the support of liberals, who champion human rights, especially 
when it comes to such a blatant violation of such an important 
convention."

  If the Chief Prosecutor in The Hague should decide to open an 
investigation and if the ICC convicts Ahmadinejad, says Kahan, the 
prosecutor can issue an extradition order against the Iranian 
president. Clearly Iran will not extradite its president to The 
Hague, but it will be possible to restrict his movements outside the 
borders of the country, because if he visits one of the countries 
that is a signatory to the convention, it will have to arrest him 
immediately. Meir Rosen explains that if the discussion comes to the 
UN General Assembly, it will be possible to impose sanctions against 
Iran itself, for example by severing commercial and diplomatic ties, 
and preventing the landing of Iranian planes in other countries.

  In the first stage, Gold and his colleagues intend to publish the 
document as a book in English, and to organize several events, mainly 
in the United States and Great Britain, in order to enlist support 
for the move. The four intend to raise the issue at the UN General 
Assembly, an annual event convening all the heads of state, which 
will take place in September. At the same time, the four plan to 
begin proceedings in legal channels. Several important jurists have 
already joined the initiative.

  Irwin Kotler, former Justice Minister of Canada and one of the 
authors of the basic convention of the court in The Hague, told 
Haaretz this week that Canada may submit a request to The Hague to 
investigate Ahmadinejad. Kotler said that genocide is the most 
serious crime that exists, and that this is not only a matter of 
punishment after the fact, but before the fact, which is the meaning 
of the expression "Never again."

  He added that prosecution after the fact is too late, and that we 
must remember that cases of genocide like the Holocaust succeeded due 
to the demonization of the other. The Holocaust began with words, 
said Kotler, not with the gas chambers. It is no coincidence that 
incitement to murder appears in all the legal documents, because the 
international community recognizes the fact that incitement is a 
significant part of the process of genocide. In the case of 
Ahmadinejad, he said, we are taking about a fixed and clear pattern 
of incitement to genocide.

  George Fletcher, a professor of international criminal law at 
Columbia University and one of the most important theoreticians today 
in the United States, believes that the initiative is important and 
necessary, because we have to label the behavior of Ahmadinejad 
illegal. The worst thing, he said, is that it is being greeted by 
silence, and is thus becoming acceptable. This is criminal behavior 
par excellence. Fletcher says that this is a matter of world peace, 
not necessarily Israeli peace, and calls it "racist" speech: The fact 
that a politician is talking about the murder of specific people as a 
group is intolerable and leads to dehumanization. It is a blow to 
humanity, according to Fletcher.

  Attorney Alan Dershowitz has also joined the initiative. In an 
interview from his home in the United States, he said that this is a 
test for the international community of the seriousness of its 
intentions and of its ability to execute international norms and 
laws. If, God forbid, there should be genocide, and if it is Iran 
that commits it against the State of Israel, it is clear that the 
president of Iran will be convicted of incitement, said Dershowitz. 
He added that this means that Ahmadinejad is violating the law 
already, because the incitement is taking place now. "Do we really 
have to wait until the genocide takes place?" he asked.