Ten British citizens who have served with Israel’s military during the 18-month onslaught in Gaza have been accused of grave war crimes.
A team of lawyers in Britain and researchers in The Hague will today hand in a 240-page dossier to Scotland Yard’s war crimes unit detailing all the allegations against the suspects.
These include the targeted killing of civilians and aid workers, including by sniper fire, and indiscriminate attacks on civilian areas, including hospitals.
It is alleged that they were involved in the forced transfer and displacement of civilians, and coordinated attacks on protected sites.
For legal reasons, neither the names of suspects, who include officer-level individuals, nor the full report are being made public.
What we know is that some of them are dual British-Israeli nationals. It is still unclear which of them are still taking part in Israeli assaults on Gaza and if any have since returned to the UK.
Each of the crimes the 10 suspects are accused of amounts to a war crime or crime against humanity, according to the report.
Testimony from witnesses in Gaza recounts the ‘dead bodies scattered next to each other’.
One recalled removing a blanket from corpses to find ‘the bodies of my uncle and his son, my nephews, and my brother-in-law along with other displaced people’s bodies’.
Another witness said soldiers ‘ordered my father, husband and children to strip.
A third witness, who was at a medical facility, saw corpses ‘scattered on the ground, especially in the middle of the hospital courtyard, where many dead bodies were buried in a mass grave’.
They recalled a bulldozer ‘running over a dead body in a horrific and
heart-wrenching scene desecrating the dead’.
