LONDON, October 31 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - A prominent British human rights lawyer has urged his country to press war crimes charges against Israel's hardline ex-army chief, General Shaul Mofaz, officials said, as Mofaz accepted the post of Defense Minister in hardline Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's new government Thursday, October 31.

Lawyer Imran Kahn, a British national of Pakistani origin, filed his request Tuesday, October 29, as Mofaz was in Britain on a fund-raising visit, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.

Khan sent a 17-page dossier to the Director of Public Prosecutions, who passed it to Scotland Yard's crimes against humanity unit, said the Independent. Khan, who is representing families of Palestinian victims, says the case can be investigated and tried in Britain because all Geneva Convention signatories are obliged to enforce them, wherever breaches are committed.

"It is a mandatory obligation on the British police as signatory to the [Geneva] Convention, that they search for people who are alleged to have committed those breaches, and effectively bring them to justice," Kahn told AFP.

In his dossier, Khan accused Mofaz of breaching the Geneva Convention banning the use of torture while he was head of the Israeli occupation army.

Many accusations relate to the Israeli attack on Jenin in April 2002, a deadly incursion which provoked a plea from the Human Rights Watch organization for a war crimes investigation, the British paper added.

Other allegations relate to Israeli offensives across the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip during Mofaz's time as Chief of Staff. The Israeli military regularly assassinates Palestinian resistance activists in what it calls "targeted killings," the Independent reported.

"It is a mandatory obligation on the British police as signatory to the [ Geneva ] Convention, that they search for people who are alleged to have committed those breaches, and effectively bring them to justice," Kahn said

During a joint visit to an occupation army base in the West Bank, Mofaz was seen telling Sharon: “We should kick him out.” Sharon - apparently unaware his comments were being recorded - replied, “I know.” Mofaz continued: “This is an opportunity now that won’t return.”

Hardline Mofaz, a 52-year-old of Iranian origin, was appointed Israeli Defense Minister Thursday in place of Labor party chief Binyamin Ben Eliezer, who quit the national unity government in protest at continued budget allocations to sprawling illegal Jewish settlements at the expense of social services.

Kahn had led the case for the prosecution in a high profile trial surrounding the murder of Stephen Lawrence, a black student stabbed to death by a white gang in 1993, which had sparked fiery debate about institutional racism in Britain. 

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