Israel Resource Review |
22nd March, 2007 |
Contents:
DOCUMENTATION: EGYPT MURDERED ISRAELI POW'S
Egypt has recently expressed outrage at Israel because of the possibility that IDF soldiers murdered Egyptian POWs during the Six Day War.
Now, Israeli military historian Aryeh Yitzhaki wants to remind Egypt that they do not have an innocent reputation for their treatment of prisoners. He approached the Egyptian diplomatic delegation in Israel with a demand that they investigate the alleged murder of 110 Israeli POWs during the Yom Kippur war.
Yitzhaki is demanding that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak set up a
committee to investigate the alleged murder of 110 Israeli war prisoners
taken captive by Egyptian troops during the Yom Kippur War in 1973. Last
Friday he sent a letter to the acting Egyptian ambassador in Israel
asking that the incident be investigated. In his letter, Yitzhaki wrote
that he was in the possession of testimony and detailed data regarding
the murders.
He wrote: "The soldiers underwent barbaric abuse as POWs and those
who were not murdered suffered irreversible emotional damage." Yitzhaki,
who investigated the war while in the IDF history department, claimed in
the letter: "Most atrociously, in a number of cases, commendations were
issued to the murderers for their crimes."
In his letter, Yitzhaki demanded that the Egyptian president instruct
the establishment of an investigative committee into the affair that
would relay its findings to the general prosecutor and put the war
criminals on trial. In an addendum, Yitzhaki wrote that in the first two
days of the Yom Kippur War, several dozen soldiers from Battalion 68 of
the Jerusalem Brigade who were at the Bar-Lev line strongholds fell into
captivity.
He said that 25 of them were murdered by officers and soldiers from
Division 18 of the Egyptian infantry and by Brigade 135 of the Egyptian
army. He said that they were all murdered after surrendering, their arms
were taken from them and they were bound. He also makes the accusation
that later the Egyptians abused the bodies.
In another affair, Yitzhaki says that the commander of the Second
Army, Louai Maamoun, was among those responsible for the murder of
soldiers who were taken captive in the Mitzuri compound as well as all
the murders in the northern sector of the fighting.
Yitzhaki is basing his accusations on documentation that he has collected over ten years, in addition to testimony gathered by an Israeli non-profit
organization that handles all the POWs not initially recognized by the
Israeli Defense Ministry as suffering from trauma as a result of falling into captivity.
"I decided to do something for all those Israeli soldiers who were
heinously murdered by the Egyptians and therefore I sent the letter to
the acting Egyptian ambassador in the hope that I would receive from
them a response to the data I have," said Yitzhaki.
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