The highest court in Spain has decided to call off an investigation of seven Israelis for alleged war crimes in connection with the 2002 killing of Hamas terrorist mastermind Saleh Shehadeh in Gaza. Spanish legislators are about to change the law that gave their courts jurisdiction in the case. The decision came just two months after Judge Fernando Andreu decided to proceed with the war crimes investigation after rejecting an appeal by the prosecution itself that the probe should be frozen due to the existence of a similar investigation underway in Israel. However, in the interim, the Spanish parliament has voted initial support for a bill that would restrict Spanish courts to hearing cases directly involving Spain or Spanish citizens. If the legislation passes, it would entirely remove Spanish jurisdiction from cases such as the Shehadeh prosecution. None of those involved are known to be Spanish citizens. Under current Spanish law, the national courts have universal jurisdiction to investigate and prosecute alleged violations of international law, even if the offenses took place outside Spanish territory and did not involve Spanish citizens. It was pursuant to this legal situation that the Palestinian Center for Human Rights filed a complaint against Israel, which led to the opening of an investigation in January 2009. Former Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, then-Air Force Commander Dan Halutz, former Israel Security Agency (Shabak) head Avi Dichter, and former IDF Chief of Staff Moshe Yaalon were personally named in the Spanish court documents. They were accused of war crimes due to the deaths of 14 people in the July 2002 air strike that also killed the jihadist Shehadeh. The investigation included the claim that Israel committed a war crime by going ahead with the targeted killing despite the fact that Shehadeh lived in a densely crowded area of Gaza. In May, the Israel terror victim's association, Almagor, announced that it was preparing to petition for a war crimes trial of NATO leaders and nations, including Spain, over the bombing of Serbia in the 1990s. The suit would force the court to look into wartime actions by several former and current Spanish leaders, as well as those of other NATO member states. Chief among the potential targets of the Almagor suit is European Union (EU) foreign policy chief Javier Solana, who was NATO's Secretary-General during the Serbia bombing campaign. As with a similar initiative by Knesset Member Aryeh Eldad (National Union) earlier this year, the Almagor investigation was meant as a counterweight to the Spanish court's probe of the Shehadeh case. It is not clear at this time if the proposed legislation would also place the case against NATO outside Spanish jurisdiction, if such a case were to be brought before the bench.
