PCHR Director Denied Permit to Exit Gaza for International Human Rights Conference
Ref: 84/2008
Date: 18 September 2008
Time: 12:00 GMT
PCHR Director Denied Permit to Exit Gaza for
International Human Rights Conference
Raji Sourani, Director of the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) in Gaza city, was this week denied a permit by the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF)
to leave the Gaza Strip in order to address a major human rights conference in Brussels, Belgium. The conference, hosted by Diakonia, a prominent Swedish Development organisation, was attended by more than sixty Palestinian, Israeli and international human rights lawyers, legal experts and advocates. It focused on ‘Making Monitoring Work: Enforcing International Law in Europe.’
Raji Sourani was invited to Brussels to present a keynote speech on universal jurisdiction at the Diakonia conference. However, despite interventions by the French and Belgium Governments, his permit was denied by IOF on 12 September, the day he was scheduled to travel to Brussels.
A PCHR representative attended the 13/14 September Diakonia conference on behalf of Raji Sourani, and delivered his keynote speech to the conference delegates. The two-day conference featured interventions by human rights lawyers and other legal experts, including Daniel Machover, Gonzalo Boye and Ram Rahat. Daniel Machover is Head of the Civil Litigation Department at UK solicitor Hickman & Rose, and one of the most prominent human rights lawyers in the UK. He has worked with PCHR on a number of universal jurisdiction cases, including the September 2005 case against Doron Almog, the former head of the Israeli Army Southern Command. Gonzalo Boye is head of the Spanish law firm Boye-Elbal y Associados, which, on behalf of PCHR, has launched a universal jurisdiction case against seven former senior Israeli military officials for war crimes. Ram Rahat, an Israeli representative of Israeli NGO Yesh Gvul (‘There is a Limit’) presented an intervention on his organization’s tireless legal campaign to force the IOF to launch an criminal investigation into the July 2002 bombing of a residential house in Gaza city by IOF, which killed eighteen people including eight children.
The Diakonia conference brought together Palestinian, Israeli and international lawyers, legal experts and advocates together, to examine monitoring of international law in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) and the future potential for launching universal jurisdiction cases against Israeli perpetrators, and suspected perpetrators, of war crimes. The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) has almost unique experience and expertise regarding the application of universal jurisdiction, and has tirelessly carried out investigations leading to universal jurisdiction cases being launched against Israeli war criminals and suspected war criminals in international courts.
The PCHR representative also met with members of the European parliament and the Belgium Government, who reiterated they were going to raise the issue of Raji Sourani being denied a permit to leave Gaza by Israel ‘At the highest level.’
In addition to Raji Sourani being denied a permit to leave Gaza by IOF, Iyad Nasser, spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Gaza, and Issam Younis, Director of Al-Mezan Centre for Human Rights in Gaza, were both also denied permits to attend the Diakonia conference. Shawan Jabarin, Director of the Al Haq human rights centre in Ramallah on the West Bank, was also denied a permit to travel to the Brussels conference.