Legal expert: “Two alleged war crimes” committed in Lebanon pager attack

• “Israel’s military-security apparatus targets civilians and political allies of groups it considers enemies or terrorists,” legal expert Luigi Daniele told Anadolu.

ISTANBUL

The deadly pager explosions in Lebanon on Tuesday have sparked deep concern among legal experts and academics, who stress that the attacks could constitute war crimes.

The pagers, wireless telecommunications devices, exploded in several areas of Lebanon on Tuesday, killing at least 12 people, including two children, and injuring thousands.

Lebanese media suggested the incident indicated an Israeli breach of the system, while local security sources said Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency had planted explosives in Hezbollah members’ pagers months before the explosion.

Luigi Daniele, an expert in international humanitarian law, said he believed there were “two probable war crimes” linked to the incident.

“The first is to carry out targeted attacks against individual civilians who are not directly involved in the hostilities. These are illegitimate targets, which are essentially diplomats or merely political allies of Hezbollah without any combat function,” Daniele, a lecturer at Nottingham Trent University, told Anadolu.

This, he explains, falls under Article 8 (2) (b) (i) of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) for attacks against civilians who are not directly participating in hostilities.

The second potentially relevant war crime, he said, was deliberately carrying out attacks in the knowledge that they would cause “clearly excessive incidental harm to the civilian population.”

Daniele called this a “major war crime” and said the International Criminal Court recently indicted Russian military commanders for their attacks on power grids for precisely this reason.

“I think this is even more true if the detonations were planned in densely populated areas with many civilians. Therefore, this damage to the civilian population was completely predictable,” he argued.

This falls under Article 8(2)(b)(iv) of the Rome Statute and states that “an attack is deliberately launched in the knowledge that such attack will result in incidental loss of life or injury among the civilian population, or damage to civilian objects, or widespread, long-term and severe damage to the natural environment, disproportionate to the concrete and immediate overall military advantage anticipated.”

Daniele said it was important to understand that this test of excessive harm to the civilian population included “not only the killing of civilians but also their injuries.”

He also stressed that this was an attribution of the perpetrator and that no one could claim responsibility for the attack. He added that this was also an “important indicator”.

“Those responsible for the attack are probably aware of the many levels of its illegality and therefore do not accept responsibility.”

Attacks on populated civilian areas are illegal

Daniele said the legal status of those targeted was most worrying, as they were not in an area of ​​active hostilities and were reportedly in densely populated urban areas such as street markets or hair salons.

“Even assuming that some of the targets were legitimate, the modalities of the attack still point to a criminal attack by any standard,” he said.

He explained that in areas without active hostilities, only members of armed groups engaged in continuous hostilities may be attacked and that it must be proven that the targets are combatants.

According to Daniele, “this does not seem to be the case with the pager attacks in Lebanon.”

“The main problem is that Israel’s military-security apparatus targets civilians and political supporters of groups it considers enemies or terrorists. And that is not legal under international law.”

“International law requires that legitimate targets must also be attacked, taking all possible precautions to protect civilians. In addition, attacks must be stopped in any case if it is foreseeable that they will cause excessive harm to the civilian population.”

He continued: “It seems to be the opposite, that the pagers were set off in the most densely populated areas while people were out and about. So of course the carnage that actually took place was certainly predictable.”

The legal expert also emphasized another “important” prohibition of the laws of war, namely the prohibition on inflicting unnecessary injuries or unnecessary suffering, including on enemy combatants.

“So this applies even to people who might have combatant status. And here you know for sure that this does not apply to all targets. For example, foreign diplomats on foreign missions are by no means local targets. They are civilians. The same applies to mere political allies of non-state actors who do not perform combat functions or have military status in the organization,” he said.

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