Ehud Barak served US lawsuit over Gaza flotilla slaying | The Electronic Intifada - 0 views
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Ehud Barak is being sued in the United States over his role in the 2010 slaying of Turkish American citizen Furkan Doğan by Israeli commandos who stormed a boat attempting to break the siege on Gaza. The former Israeli prime minister was served court documents when he was in Los Angeles, California, for a speaking event last month. Doğan, 19, was shot multiple times at point-blank range during the raid on the Mavi Marmara, a Turkish boat in a flotilla sailing in international waters. His parents, Ahmet and Hikmet Doğan, filed the lawsuit against Barak.
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Barak was defense minister when Israeli forces shot and killed eight Turkish nationals, in addition to Doğan. A tenth victim died from his injuries in May 2014.
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Doğan’s family brings the case against Barak under the Alien Tort Statute, which allows foreign nationals to use US courts in cases alleging violations of international law. “Ehud Barak is directly responsible for killing their son,” Hakan Camuz, a spokesperson for the family, told The Electronic Intifada. “Ehud Barak is responsible for killing [Doğan] when he was under the protection of international law when he was doing humanitarian work in the international high seas.”
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In September 2010, a United Nations fact-finding mission found that Doğan was not killed instantly, but was “lying on the deck in a conscious, or semi-conscious, state for some time.” In 2013, the International Criminal Court prosecutor conducted a preliminary investigation and found that “there is a reasonable basis to believe that war crimes … were committed on one of the vessels, the Mavi Marmara.” While the prosecutor declined to open a formal investigation, an appeal is currently being considered.
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Past attempts to sue Israeli leaders have failed to move forward in US courts because of legislation barring lawsuits against foreign states. But Dan Stormer, one of the lawyers representing the Doğan family, told The Electronic Intifada that because Barak is not currently a head of state, he no longer enjoys that protection.
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The legal team representing Doğan’s parents also includes Geoffrey Nice, who helped prosecute former Serbian President Slobodan Milošević in The Hague, and Rodney Dixon, an international human rights lawyer.