UN seeks immunity for UNRWA employees complicit in Oct. 7 massacre - Channel 12 report

[moniss]

60. I have addressed the issue and I have

made it clear that what you see as a cut and dried ethical question of saying someone is a war criminal doesn't make it a proven matter in court and that's where the whole thing is. If they had already been adjudicated guilty of war crimes and then someone tried to shield them with immunity then of course we are talking about a horrible situation. But we don't have that right now. A designation of war criminal is a legal one.

Let's assume for a moment that we operate on the basis you suggest and before any legal finding takes place the UN says to these individuals that they are revoking their immunity because the UN feels they committed war crimes. Then a trial is held and they are found guilty. But they now challenge on appeal that they were wrongly deprived of immunity because at the time the UN revoked they had not been found guilty and so it was improper. Now they might well lose such appeals but it's not a guarantee and in any event it could be tied up for years. What is the point of purposely walking into that instead of getting a ruling about immunity up front? You're talking about this as though you feel the UN likes having to even go through all of this. I can assure you they would rather not.

Do you want the case to proceed and have it adjudicated in the quickest and most orderly manner so that the people who brought the suit prevail? I would think so because otherwise it's just us people out here throwing condemnation around.

From an ethical standpoint it is not ethical to label someone as guilty of a crime until they've been found guilty. We can say suspected, alleged etc. from an ethical standpoint but we cannot, and there are laws about it, label someone like this until they've been tried and convicted. The reason being, especially when a group of people are accused, it may well be that one or more will not be found guilty and so making the factual assertion that they are guilty of a crime ahead of conviction is wrong ethically in our system. It's ethically wrong to libel or slander someone with an unproven accusation and things are not proven until the jury or judge says so. It's why people get sued sometimes. I disagree that the outcome of the suit is known at this point.