The Israeli Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) could have access to two captured Lebanese resistance leaders who have been imprisoned in Israel for years.
The decision comes amid Israeli complaints about international humanitarian groups' lack of access to servicemen recently captured by the Lebanese Hizbollah resistance movement.
Sheikh Abdel Karim Obeid, imprisoned since 1989, and Mustapha Dirani, held since 1994, were captured in Lebanon and have been held in exchange for news of a missing Israeli flight navigator shot down over Lebanon in 1986.
Israel's Ron Arad was captured by the pro-Syrian Amal movement when Dirani was the movement's intelligence chief.
Dirani's political organization, Faithful Amal, later split from Amal and is now close to the Lebanese Shiite movement Hizbollah, of which Obeid was a spiritual leader and operations officer in south Lebanon, according to AFP.
The ICRC has been working in Israeli courts for the past four years to gain access to the prisoners, who were not in court for the ruling, said the agency, quoting his lawyers as saying that their client had claimed to have been beaten and raped by his jailers.
ICRC officials said Thursday a meeting date to probe the health and prison conditions of the men had not yet been set.
The Supreme Court president, Justice Aharon Barak, said in his decision that humanitarian considerations outweighed possible security concerns.
Following the ruling, the parents of three Israeli soldiers captured by Hizbollah fighters on October 7, 2000, called on the ICRC to take similar actions to get access to their children, added the report.
The welfare and location of Chief Sergeant Omar Sowad, Chief Sergeant Binyamin Avraham and Sergeant Adi Abitan are still unknown since they were captured during a raid on the Israeli-occupied Shabaa Farms.
Hizbollah has refused to arrange meetings for the soldiers with any international groups.
Hizbollah wants to use the three prisoners, and a fourth Israeli they call a captured Mossad agent, as bargain chips to secure the release of the two leaders, among hundreds of Lebanese, Palestinian and other Arab detainees in Israeli jails.
The secretary general of Hizbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, warned Israel in June that time was running out to win the release of four the Israelis held by the group, and accused Israel of “complicating” a possible swap by including Arad in the deal.
Hizbollah says it has no information on the serviceman.
Israeli experts were in Geneva on Wednesday to view a videotape shot 18 hours after the there soldiers’ capture by UNIFIL members, hoping to find clues for the fate of the POWs – Albawaba.com
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
