War crimes committed in Lebanon pager, walkie-talkie attack: Legal expert

International law prohibits the use of booby traps—harmless devices rigged with explosives—even if the target is potentially military, an expert in humanitarian law said.

A series of explosions in Lebanon on Tuesday and Wednesday killed at least 37 people and injured over 3,000, igniting a debate about whether any party—belligerent or non-belligerent—can be targeted by masquerading explosives disguised as harmless objects.

A preliminary investigation into the explosions found that hundreds of pagers had been booby-trapped. While the probe is still “in its early stages", security services continue to investigate the blasts, which they blamed on Israel.

According to a senior Lebanese security source, explosives inside the devices were planted by Israel's Mossad spy agency.

When asked about the use of explosive-laden pagers that killed children and civilians, Luigi Daniele, an expert in international humanitarian law, stated that since the bombs were triggered in crowded areas, they were designed to kill or injure many civilians, making their use inherently indiscriminate.

"It is not known to those responsible for this action and presumably for inserting military-grade explosives whether these pagers would be used exclusively by members of the relevant group" he told TRT World.

Daniele called the attack a war crime and said the perpetrators should be tried in the International Criminal Court for intentionally attacking civilians, but also for attacking local targets in the knowledge that the incidental harm to civilians will be proportional and imminent.

He explained that in areas out of active hostilities, only members of armed groups serving continuous combat functions can be targeted, and that it will need to be demonstrated that the targets were combatants.

According to Daniele, this “doesn't appear to be the case” in the Lebanon pager blasts.

“The main problem is that Israel's military security apparatus designates as targets civilians, political affiliates of groups it considers enemies or terrorists. And this is not lawful under international law.

“International law tells us that even lawful targets must be attacked (while) taking all the feasible precautions to spare civilians and in any way that the attacks should be canceled when it's foreseeable that they will cause excessive incidental civilian harm.”

The legal expert also highlighted another “important” prohibition under the laws of war and the prohibition against causing superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering including to enemy combatants.

“So (this applies) even (to) persons that might qualify for the combatant status. And here you know for sure it doesn't appear that it was the case for all targets. For example, foreign diplomats in missions abroad are by no means local targets. They are civilians. The same applies to merely political affiliates of non-state actors performing no combat functions or having no military status in the organization,” he said.