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Belgian Says Gen. Franks Committed War Crimes
From
Associated Press
May 15, 2003
BRUSSELS —— A left-wing candidate in Belgium's
parliamentary elections lodged
a war crimes complaint Wednesday against Army
Gen. Tommy Franks, commander of
coalition forces in the Iraq war.
Lawyer Jan Fermon presented the complaint against
Franks and a Marine officer
he identified as Col. Brian P. McCoy to Belgium's
federal prosecutors office
despite recent changes in the country's war
crimes law to prevent such
charges against
Americans.
Fermon said he was representing 17 Iraqi and two
Jordanian civilians injured
or bereaved by U.S. attacks, though he gave few
details.
"This is not a symbolic action. My clients want
an independent inquiry into
what happened," Fermon said.
He said the accusations against Franks focused on
the bombing of civilian
areas, what he called indiscriminate shooting by
U.S. troops when they
entered Baghdad, and the failure to stop looting.
He charged that McCoy
ordered troops to fire on ambulances.
The case has provoked anger in Washington.
America's most senior military
officer suggested the allegations and earlier
charges against other U.S.
officials could jeopardize Belgium's role as a
host for NATO and European
Union meetings.
"It's looked upon by the U.S. government as a
very, very serious situation,"
Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, said Tuesday on
a visit to NATO headquarters in Brussels.
To head off such complaints, the government last
month rushed through changes
to a law introduced in the early 1990s that
authorized Belgian courts to try
genocide and other war crimes wherever they
occurred.
Legal experts predicted that the case against
Franks and McCoy would be
thrown out by the prosecutors office.
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2003-05-16 Fri 20:40ct