Maj.-Gen. (res) Danny Rothschild was forced to cut his trip to the UK short following reports from the Israeli embassy in London that pro-Palestinian groups plan to ask the county court for his arrest, Army Radio reported Wednesday.
Rothschild coordinated IDF operations in the Palestinian territories in the early 1990s during the first Intifada.
The attempted arrest of Rothschild was allegedly in response to the arrest of Raed Salah last week, Army Radio said.
Rothschild entered the UK without any problems earlier this week and on Monday gave a lecture to a large crowd at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) in Whitehall.
He was due to give a speech in parliament on Tuesday, organized by the Henry Jackson Society, as well as to appear before another think tank but pulled out of both events, and instead hurried out of the country, taking the Eurostar to France -- so as to avoid passport control at Heathrow-- and flying home Tuesday night.
This comes a day after Knesset member and former Labour leader Amir Peretz was also forced to cut short a London visit, for the same reason.
In December, a Police and Social Responsibility Bill passed the power to issue universal jurisdiction warrants to the Director of Public Prosecutions, when it previously lay with individual magistrates.
In practice, this means it would be much harderalthough not impossible-- for courts to issue the arrest warrants. The new system would also delay proceedings, so that any suspect would have ample time to evade arrest by leaving the country.
However, the bill still needs to be approved in parliament to take effect, a process that could take months.
British Ambassador in Israel Matthew Gould said Wednesday that "an amendment to the law has already passed the House of Commons, and is currently making its way through the Lords. It is expected to become law later in the year."
He added that "the proposed change will help ensure that arrest warrants are not granted when there is no realistic chance of prosecution. It will prevent the law from being misused for political reasons. We remain committed to upholding international justice, and continue to believe that those guilty of war crimes must be brought to justice. The change in the law will not affect our ability to do so."
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Sir Richard Dearlove says al-Qaida may have passed its zenith but could still muster a spectacular outrage
It's not that al-Qaeda is past its peak. It might well be.
It's all the other Islamicist terrorist groups out there. Seems like we at Rantburg are cataloging new groups every week: same eye-rolling, same gun sex, same vows of Dire Revenge. They're all holy men and talibs with AK's and unlimited ammo.
Stomping al-Qaeda flat into the ground is emotionally satisfying but it isn't sufficient.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
