Legal groups urge AFP to arrest retired Israeli general travelling with president

As opposition to the arrival of Israeli president Isaac Herzog grows, a coalition of Australian and Palestinian legal groups has asked the Australian Federal Police to investigate and arrest Doron Almog, a retired Israel Defense Forces major general expected to travel with the president in his role as chair of the Jewish Agency for Israel.

Mass protests are planned and some Labor MPs have condemned Herzog’s invitation. Almog denies the allegations. Almog has faced an arrest warrant over alleged war crimes in Gaza in 2002; a London court issued a warrant in 2005 after an application by British lawyers for Palestinian victims, and he narrowly avoided arrest at Heathrow when he remained on an El Al plane before it returned to Israel.

The warrant accused him of ordering the destruction of dozens of Palestinian homes near Rafah and has also implicated him in the al‑Daraj bombing in 2002, in which a one‑tonne bomb killed 14 people, mostly babies and children. The UK warrant has since been withdrawn.

Australia