Top UK barrister: Israel is carrying out ‘destruction of humanity’ in Gaza

Ten British citizens, including dual nationals, who have served in the Israeli army are being accused of war crimes in Gaza.

They are suspected of acts such as “murder, extermination, attacking civilians, and deportation or forcible transfer of population”, according to the Palestine-based Palestinian Centre for Human Rights and the UK-based Public Interest Law Centre, which last week submitted a 240-page report to the Metropolitan Police’s War Crimes Unit.Michael Mansfield, 83, a leading English barrister who has worked on several high-profile cases throughout his career and is dubbed “the king” of human rights work, was among those who handed over the dossier that took a team of lawyers and researchers in Britain and The Hague six months to compile.

Dozens of other barristers, lawyers, researchers and human rights practitioners have signed a letter of support, urging the Met’s war crimes team to investigate the complaints.

Due to legal reasons, neither the names of the suspects, some of whom worked at the officer level, nor the report in full are being made public. Alleged war crimes from October 7, 2023, to May 31 are documented in the file, which is based on open-source material and witness testimonies.Michael Mansfield: The reason I can’t talk about the detail of it is perhaps obvious: … The people [accused] would immediately know who they were.

If a UK national commits any serious crime abroad, … you are liable to be and are investigated, arrested, charged and tried here in the United Kingdom. This is nothing out of the ordinary in that sense.

The out-of-the-ordinary bit, of course, is that it is linked to war crimes and crimes against humanity, which are international crimes.The United Kingdom can obviously investigate themselves, or the International Criminal Court can investigate and charge and so forth.

Nobody can be unaware of the extent of the devastation, particularly in Gaza, although that’s not the only place in the world where such things are happening. And in relation to those matters, the public are asking, “What are we doing about it? What can we do about it?”

The international institutions of justice and conventions on human rights were established just after the Second World War in order to prevent this happening, if at all possible, by intervening.

[But] the United Nations’s ability to intervene has been emasculated by the major nations – Russia and America nearly always opposing each other. On top of that, the United Kingdom sitting on the fence and abstaining on most of these issues.Slowly but surely, all the principles to do with the rule of law and rules-based democracy have been, essentially, denuded from practicality.

The court finds it very difficult to do anything because the countries [allegedly behind war crimes] are seemingly immune. They don’t mind what the international courts may think – either the International Criminal Court [or the] International Court of Justice.

Al Jazeera: As most monitors and observers are unable to enter Gaza presently due to the Israeli siege, how did the researchers and lawyers behind the report identify those accused?

Mansfield: Linking the individual [to the alleged crimes] is the problem. You’ve got to be able to provide investigators with at least enough evidence for them to say this is worth investigating.

They might say, “We can’t do this. It’s too difficult.” Then they might hand it over to the International Criminal Court, which has more resources.

There’s something called the Berkeley Protocol, which is focused on how you would gather evidence from publicly available sources.