Rights as Usual

A Palestinian family, with the support of the ACAT and represented by the Paris-based law firm Ancile-avocats, have filed a criminal complaint against the French company Exxelia Technologies. They claim that the company is at least guilty of manslaughter and possibly also complicit in a war crime. In July 2014, a missile, probably dropped from a drone, landed on the Shuheibar’s family house’s roof where several children were feeding birds. A little girl – Afnan (8) – and two boys – Wassim (9) and Jihad (10) – were killed in the attack. Two other children – Udai (15) and Bassil (9) – were severely injured. As the house does not appear to have been a legitimate military target, the attack may constitute a war crime. In the debris, a component was found on which one could read “Eurofarad France”. Experts have since determined that the component is a Hall effect sensor made by Exxelia Technologies.

The core of the complaint is that the company sold the component to Israel with knowledge that it would be part of a missile and with knowledge that it was susceptible to be used to commit a war crime. Although it is directed against a company and not an individual businessperson, the complaint bears similarities with the case against Dutch businessman Frans Van Anraat. In 2005 the District Court of The Hague found him guilty of complicity of war crimes for having sold chemicals used in the fabrication of mustard gas, with knowledge of what the chemicals would be used for, to the Iraqi government under Saddam Hussein’s rule. The gas, made with the chemicals that Van Anraat sold, was later used against Kurdish villages as well as Iranian villages in the context of the Iran-Iraq war, killing thousands of civilians. Van Anraat was sentenced to 15 years in prison, a sentence that was increased to 17 years by the Appeals Court in 2007.

The complaint against Exxelia Technologies is the third of its kind in France where two separate complaints against French software companies Amesys and Qosmos for complicity of torture are currently being investigated. It is claimed that they sold surveillance equipment to Gaddafi’s Libya and Assad’s Syria respectively and trained local police forces on how to use it, leading to a number of individuals being identified, arrested and tortured. Neither company has formally been charged yet.

As the notion of corporate criminal liability for international crimes is still at its infancy in international law (see my post on this here), these domestic cases are of paramount importance for the field of business and human rights.