CAIRO: Egypt has made an official request to the International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC) to launch an enquiry into the claims of the Israeli documentary “Spirit of Shaked that 250 Egyptian captured soldiers were killed during the 1967 war.
State Minister for Legislative Affairs Mufid Shehab told parliament Monday “Egypt has officially requested the ICRC to launch an enquiry into the matter of the prisoners and to hand over relevant documents.
Head of Israeli research at Al Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies Abdel-Aleem Mohammed told The Daily Star Egypt “Egyptian courts can chase the case in an international arena.
The “Spirit of Shaked aired on Israeli television in February showed footage of what it claimed was 250 Egyptian soldiers killed by Israeli troops. The makers of the film later claimed that the footage was of 250 Palestinian resistance fighters.
Director Ran Ederlist told AP “You could say there was excessive use of force, but it was all in the context of war: Not prisoners, not prisoner-of-war camps, not people who put their hands up.
The ICRC confirmed to AFP that Egypt had launched an official request, which would be passed to the headquarters in Geneva.
Benny Sharoni from the Political Affairs department at the Israeli embassy in Cairo previously told The Daily Star Egypt that the furor over the “Spirit of Shaked was unmerited.
“The movie screened in Israel does not show any murder of Egyptian POWs, Sharoni said, “it tells the story of a certain army unit from the 50s to the 70s and out of 55 minutes, it’s only two and a half minutes that concerns the 1967 war.
Another Israeli documentary aired after the “Spirit of Shaked claimed that in the 1973 war, it was in fact Egyptian forces that killed Israeli prisoners of war.
Mohammed said “Egypt cannot do something like this because it respects the Geneva Convention, especially in matters of conduct during warfare and prisoners of war.
Recently, two UN peacekeepers present during the 1967 war cast doubt on the murder of POWs stating that the massacre of 250 soldiers would have been found out by them.
