Along with over a hundred other innocent people, popular TV personality Salwa Hegazi was killed when Israel shot down the civil aircraft she was on in 1973. Thirty years later, her family has decided to sue. Rehab Saad reports The event that sparked the Hegazi family's decision to sue Israel for the wrongful death of popular TV personality Salwa Hegazi -- who was killed, in 1973, along with 112 other people, when Israel, shot down the civil aircraft they were on -- took place in Paris. Hegazi's eldest daughter Radwa Sherif was at a ceremony organised by the Egyptian Cultural Centre in commemoration of the late TV announcer's death. Hegazi was being honoured in Paris for she had also been a poet who wrote in French. "I was asked to give a speech about her life and work," her daughter said. At the end of the speech, she briefly commented on the circumstances surrounding her mother's tragic death, facts that had been "forgotten by some" and "were not known to others". After the speech, many among those attending the function expressed their sympathy, and advised her to file a law suit against Israel asking for compensation, an idea, Sherif said, that she and her brothers had thought of "a long time ago, but didn't know how to begin implementing. This time, things would be different". When Sherif came back from Paris, news of the family's intention to file a law suit against Israel sparked extensive media coverage. According to Mohamed Sherif, Hegazi's eldest son, the coverage helped "revive the case". He got calls from many other families of victims, who expressed their support for the move. "We've gathered about 32 families so far," he said, including Egyptians and Libyans. Sherif has become the victims' families' spokesman. He said the case was based on the fact that Israel breached the codes of international law by attacking a civil aircraft. "It was clear," Sherif said, "that it was a civil craft, that had lost its way, and that there was a sandstorm." On 21 February 1973, Sherif's mother, Salwa Hegazi, was on board Libyan Arab Airlines flight 114, Benghazi to Cairo. The Boeing 727-224 was carrying 113 passengers and crew, including then Libyan Foreign Minister Salah Bou Seir. According to a section on the Aviation Safety Network (ASN) Web site chronicling every major aviation accident in history since 1945, as the airplane approached Cairo, a heavy sandstorm had all but eliminated visibility, and the plane swayed off course past Sidi Barrani and continued past Cairo. "Over the Sinai desert [which had been occupied, since 1967, by Israel] visibility improved, and the crew must have realised their error. At the same time, however, they had fallen off the range of navigational facilities, and found themselves being intercepted by two Israeli Air Force McDonnell F-4E Phantom fighters. "The jet fighters tried to get the plane to land by rocking their wings, and firing across the nose of the Boeing. When the crew tried to turn the plane back, and head for Cairo, the Phantom pilots thought they were trying to escape." They decided to attack, hitting the 727's right wingtip with tracers. A fire erupted, the crew tried for a belly landing in the desert, but crashed and burned. According to the Web site, the Cairo beacon was probably not functioning properly at the time, and the approach control radar was out of order. The majority of those on board died. Salwa Hegazi, 38-years-old at the time, was a mother of four -- Radwa, 18, Mohamed, 16, Asir, 14, and Hani, four. Besides being a renowned TV presenter -- the host of such then popular shows as "A recording tape" and "Under the sun", Hegazi was a talented writer who had won a prestigious international French poetry award, and regularly had her poems translated into Arabic by literary heavyweights like Ahmed Rami, Kamel El-Shennawi, Nizar Qabbani and Saleh Gawdat. She had been on her way home after a month of shooting programmes for Egyptian TV in Libya. The director, Awad Mustafa, was also on the plane, leaving behind a 3-month old baby. A daughter of one of the other victims said her father had been working in Libya at the time, and was coming home to witness her own birth. More than 100 people were killed. Hisham Hussein was nine years old when he lost his uncle. Said Hanafi lost his younger brother. Zaki El-Shami lost both his father and aunt. The list goes on. According to experts in international law, in a situation like this, the Israeli pilots should have either given the French pilot of the Libyan plane a warning -- ordering him to go back to the original destination he came from -- or else allowed him to land, and then investigated why the plane was in the area. The third option -- shooting the plane down -- should only have been adopted if there was a strong reason to believe the plane was hostile or if it did not respond to the order to land. Experts believe that Israel bypassed the first two options, proceeding directly to the third, even though the plane was from Libya, a state Israel was not at war with at the time. International law expert Yehia El- Shimy said that by shooting down the plane, Israel had broken war's law of proportionality. In attempting to ensure their security, they had exceeded all forms of proportionality by killing civilians. In war, El-Shimy said (and, at the time, there was an ongoing War of Attrition between Egypt and Israel), international law requires that civilians -- to the greatest extent possible -- be kept out of danger's way. "And if they are exposed to any kind of danger, it should not be intentional." Aisha Rateb, Ain Shams University international law professor, said the case was a clear-cut terrorist act against civilians. Rateb said there was no statute of limitations on war crimes cases, and that "a fair judicial process could only lead to a verdict against Israel and a victory for the victims' families." Although the case could be filed in an Egyptian court, Rateb doubted that "the Egyptian government would agree to try such a case. Belgium -- where the law permits courts to rule in international war crimes, piracy, drug smuggling and slave trade cases, would be a better option. It would receive much more attention in Belgium than in Egypt," she said. Recent events have played a part in the Hegazi family's decision to file suit. The family says it couldn't help but be moved by the political atmosphere: the occupation of Iraq; and Israel's atrocities against the Palestinians. News of families of the Lockerbie bombing victims obtaining about $10 million each from Libya made Mohamed Sherif realise that "everyone has to seek out their rights. People around us are asking us why we waited for so long, because this isn't just about Salwa Hegazi; it's about ensuring that any Egyptian who has been exposed to this kind of act has rights. That's the solid case we have to build." According to Sherif, even though the evidence was not overwhelming, an entire country -- Libya -- had been accused of bombing a plane over Lockerbie, Scotland. With the help of a superpower's pressure, a verdict and compensation resulted. "In our case, the facts are clear: a civilian airplane was flying over Egyptian territory and was shot down by the Israelis. They even admitted doing it. However, in our case, unlike with Lockerbie, there was no international denunciation and there were no compensations," he said. The main reason for that, of course, is that before now, nothing was being done about it. Now that the Hegazi family has managed to bring the old case back into the spotlight, they also know they have a long way to go. "We need everybody's support," Sherif said. "The government, human rights organisations, the Arab League, NGOs, lawyers and ordinary people." The Arab League, the Egyptian Foreign Ministry, and the Bar Association have already been contacted, with mixed results. "The Arab League is considering holding a conference to present the case and see whether one of its affiliated human rights organisations will tackle it, or else attempt for a more international dimension by urging other international human rights organisations to take action." The family has not yet received a response to the letter they sent explaining the case to Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher. A Foreign Ministry source told Al-Ahram Weekly that the ministry's legal department is studying the matter before responding. The Bar Association, meanwhile, has decided to adopt the case, its Secretary- General Seif El-Islam Hassan El-Banna told the Weekly. El-Banna said the association was aiming for a collective Arab stance via the Federation of Arab Lawyers, which meets next month in Morocco. "We [Egyptian lawyers] will urge Arab countries to sign the Rome Convention related to the new international criminal court initiated in 1998. This convention gives individuals the right to sue governments, and this would help tremendously in this particular case," El- Banna said. Egyptian individuals could only file suit against the Israeli government if the convention is signed. Otherwise, only the Egyptian government has that right. Sherif stressed that the family has heard a great deal of comments and opinions from experts and lawyers; all the same, they are still not sure of their next step. "We don't know where we are going to file the suit. We haven't decided on a lawyer yet and we don't even know whether the documents we have are sufficient. These types of cases require a lot of patience and a lot of money. I am not talking about collecting donations. That is not the kind of support we want. More than that, we need a large organisation, Egyptian or foreign, specialised in these types of cases, to embrace our cause and show us the way. These organisations could finance a case like this and they know the ins and outs." The family has gathered documents related to the case, and is considering seeking support from the Libyan government in the form of "detailed information about the plane, its course, and the names of people who were on board," Sherif said. Hafez Abu Se'da of the Egyptian Organisation of Human Rights (EOHR) said the family should also "seek the help of the Egyptian government in that respect. Documents are the most important issue in the case, and without the support of the Egyptian government they'll reach a deadlock because there is certain data that cannot be obtained without the government's help. Things like data from the archives of Egyptian airports." Although the EOHR is ready to provide the victims' families with legal support -- in the form of the organisation's "experts in international as well as criminal law, and its powerful links with lawyers in Egypt and abroad," said Abu Se'da -- "we could not provide any financial support. A case like this would absorb all of our finances." Which means that while it took 30 years for the victims' families to wake up to their rights, time will only tell how long it will take to actually get them.
