A Belgian judge has opened an investigation of Israeli Prime Minister Mr Ariel Sharon for alleged crimes against humanity in a 1982 massacre of hundreds of Palestinians, a judicial spokesman said today.
Examining Judge Patrick Collignon opened the investigation after finding merit in two complaints filed against Mr Sharon for his alleged role in the killing of Palestinians at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Lebanon, said Mr Josef Colpin, spokesman for the public prosecutor's office in Brussels.
"The investigation was to determine whether there is enough evidence to press charges against Sharon," Mr Colpin said.
The complaints, filed earlier this month by Lebanese and Palestinian survivors of the massacre, accuse Mr Sharon of war crimes and genocide under a relatively new Belgian law allowing its courts to prosecute foreigners for human rights abuses committed outside the country.
The maximum punishment for the crimes is life imprisonment.
Mr Chibli Mallat, a Lebanese lawyer who filed one of the complaints on behalf of 23 survivors, hailed the decision.
"It is an important day for the victims of Sabra and Shatila," he told Reuters in Beirut on Saturday after initial reports of the decision.
Mr Mehdi Abbes, a Brussels lawyer who filed the second complaint on behalf of at least five survivors, said the opening of the investigation was the first step in a long process.
A landmark Belgian trial earlier this year of four Rwandans for involvement in their country's 1994 genocide occurred six years after an examining judge opened his investigation into complaints brought against them.
The complaints against Sharon, dismissed by a Sharon lawyer as a political stunt, have increased pressure on the Israeli leader as he prepares an official trip to Europe this week.
In 1983, an Israeli state inquiry found Mr Sharon, then defence minister, indirectly responsible for the killing of hundreds of men, women and children at Sabra and Shatila camps during Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon.
Israeli soldiers allowed allied Lebanese Christian militiamen to enter the camps, ostensibly to search for Palestinian gunmen. The massacre continued for two days while Israeli troops surrounded the camps.