BRUSSELS, June 26 (UPI) -- A Belgian appeals court threw out war crimes charges leveled against Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon Wednesday in a ruling that could spell the death-knell of a controversial law allowing human rights abuses committed elsewhere to be tried in Brussels.
In a 22-page ruling, the three judge panel declared: "If a person is not found on the territory, we find the case inadmissible."
The case against Sharon was brought by survivors of a 1982 massacre in the Sabra and Shatila refugee outside Beirut, in which more than 800 Palestinians were killed by Lebanese militia allied to Israel.
Sharon was Israeli defense minister at the time, though the former general was later forced to stepped down after an investigation found him indirectly responsible for the killings.
"The course of justice has been interrupted today, but efforts to halt impunity for war crimes committed in Beirut 20 years ago continue in Belgium and elsewhere," said a statement from Chibli Mallat, Michael Verhaeghe and Luc Walleyn, lawyers for the survivors. "The efforts to end impunity will not cease."
Lawyers promised to appeal the court's decision.
The ruling is the second blow in as many months to Belgium's infamous "universal jurisdiction" law, which has been used to open cases against Palestinian Authority leader Yasser Arafat, Cuban President Fidel Castro and former Chilean leader Augusto Pinochet.
Last month, a Belgian court rejected a similar case brought against former Congolese Foreign Minister Abduolaye Yerodia Ndombasi on the grounds that he was not to be found on Belgian territory.
However, the 1993 law was successfully used to prosecute two Rwandan nuns last year for their role in the country's genocide.
Opponents of the law welcomed the court's decision Wednesday.
"A trial that began with more politics than law happily ends with more law than politics," Israeli diplomat Daniel Shek told reporters outside the Brussels courtroom.
Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres also expressed his delight at the long-awaited verdict. "One nation cannot judge another nation," he said, adding: "A nation that doesn't fortunately, have to fight a war will hardly understand a nation that has to do it."
However, human rights campaigners reacted with dismay at the decision.
"The massacres of Sabra and Shatila refugee camps were war crimes and need to be fully and impartially investigated," said Amnesty International. The civil liberties group added: "International law to combat impunity must not be undermined, especially as the International Criminal Court will enter into force on 1 July."
