Egyptian officials are reportedly “gathering evidence” against Infrastructures Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer to try him on murder charges in Egypt or at the World Court in The Hague.
They claim that soldiers under his command during the 1967 Six Day War executed 250 Egyptian prisoners of war at the close of the conflict, rather than transfer them to prisons in Israel.
In an article in the government-controlled Al-Ahram newspaper Friday, a government spokesperson said that Cairo was "gathering evidence" in order to make a case against Ben-Eliezer.
Members of the Egyptian Parliament are calling for Israel to recall its Ambassador to Cairo, Shalom Cohen, as part of the brouhaha. Moreover, former United Nations secretary general Boutros Boutros Ghali is reportedly lobbying Egyptian authorities to take the case to the UN International Criminal Court (ICC).
The controversy began with an Israeli documentary film, “The Spirit of Shaked,” which aired in Israel earlier this month. Egyptian officials claimed that the documentary proved that “Israeli hands are drenched with the blood of Egyptian prisoners.”
Ben-Eliezer, who led the elite Shaked unit during the war, has denied the charge. He said that no massacre of Egyptian troops had occurred and that Israel was fighting Fedayeen terrorists in Gaza. The unit he headed, he said last week, had killed "a battalion of Palestinian fedayeen operating from the Gaza Strip. I'm talking about this particular event, the 250. There were no Egyptians in this area.”
In addition, the producer of the documentary said that the report verified that the dead fighters were armed and were killed while fighting.
Some commentators have questioned why such a movie was broadcast on government-funded television.
Last Tuesday, Foreign Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Tzipi Livni met with her Egyptian counterpart, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, to express Israel’s concern over the allegations. Livni bluntly told Aboul Gheit during their meeting that "certain elements in Egypt are misrepresenting the documentary film... without checking the facts or substantiating what actually happened, with the intent of sabotaging our two countries' relationship."
Livni made it clear that the film does not describe a case of a massacre of prisoners of war, but rather the death of soldiers in the heat of battle. She promised to forward a copy of the film and a transcript of the narration to the Egyptian official.