The Supreme Court ruled Monday to reject the state’s appeal against a ruling
made by the Tel Aviv District Court to permit Lebanese terrorist Mustafa Dirani
to sue the state for damages.
Dirani, a former leader of Lebanese
terrorist group Amal, was believed to have had personal knowledge of the
whereabouts of kidnapped IAF navigator Lt.-Col. Ron Arad. Amal forces
captured Arad in October 1986 during a mission to attack PLO targets near Sidon
in Lebanon.
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Report: IDF doctor says Dirani was raped
In 1994, then prime minister Yitzhak Rabin ordered Israeli
commandos to raid Dirani’s house. The terrorist leader was brought to Israel and
held in administrative detention.
In 2000, Dirani filed a NIS 6 million
suit in the Tel Aviv District Court, charging that interrogators had raped him,
sodomized him with a club, kept him naked for weeks and humiliated him in an
effort to extract information about Arad’s whereabouts.
Dirani was
released in 2004 as part of a prisoner exchange with Hezbollah, despite a
lawsuit by Arad’s family to try to prevent his release. In return, Hezbollah
returned the bodies of three IDF soldiers killed by Hezbollah in October 2000
and kidnapped Israeli businessman Elhanan Tannenbaum.
In 2005, the Tel
Aviv District Court rejected the state’s request to cancel the
lawsuit.
The state had argued that Israel should act in accordance with
Anglo-American law, which prohibits an enemy of the state residing in a hostile
country from suing the state.
The state immediately appealed the ruling
to the Supreme Court.
In rejecting the state’s appeal, judges Ayala
Procaccia, Salim Jubran and Hanan Meltser wrote that in cases of alleged human
rights violations by the state, it is “justified that the issue will be
clarified before the state’s law courts.”
The judges went on to write
that: “This statement is right also in regard to opening the courts’ doors to
hostile parties in order to hear their claims regarding damages caused to their
rights by state authorities. This is not a danger to the state’s power,
but is actually a guarantee of its moral and ethical strength.”
Following
Monday’s ruling to reject the appeal, Dirani will be permitted to continue his
lawsuit against the state.
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