By IRNA
London : British police allowed an Israeli war criminal to escape arrest at London’s Heathrow airport in September 2005, an official inquiry has confirmed.
Armed police were waiting to execute a warrant against Major Doron Almog upon his arrival in the UK, but were said to have feared a gun fight with his bodyguards as he stayed on his El Al flight, according to the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC).
Documents seen by the BBC revealed that Almog, who had reportedly ordered the destruction of more than 50 homes in the Gaza Strip in 2002, was allowed to flew straight back to Israel.
But former head of Scotland Yard’s flying squad, John O’ Connor, said that all the police needed to do “was to stop the plane from taking off and negotiate through the Foreign Office.”
The arrest, ordered under a warrant obtained by Palestinian campaigners, was “written off” and put “British justice is in the dock,” O’Connor told BBC One’s Breakfast programme.
The Israeli Embassy in London was said to have heard about the arrest warrant and the general was tipped off. But a spokesman for the IPCC said its review had not identified the source who leaked details of the planned arrest.
But the commission concluded that the police had not broken rules by failing to board the aircraft to execute the arrest warrant. There were said to be concerns about the “international impact of a potentially armed police operation at an airport.”
The incident was reportedly caused a diplomatic storm at the time, and led to Foreign Secretary apologizing to his Israeli counterpart Silvan Shalom, who described the attempted arrest as an “outrage.”