Two French lawyers said they planned to initiate legal proceedings against French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Monday for crimes against humanity over the NATO-led military campaign in Libya.
Jacques Verges and Roland Dumas (R and L in the photo respectively) offered to represent the families who fell victims of the NATO bombing campaign.
Dumas, a former socialist minister, said the NATO mission, which was meant to protect civilians, was in fact killing them.
He denounced what he described as ’a brutal assault against a sovereign country’ and said he defends victims of NATO bombings.
IRNA reporter in Paris said that Dumas and Verges, who visited Libya, were impressed with violence and brutality against innocent people perpetrated by NATO.
Despite Western denial of civilian casualties caused by the two-month-old bombings, Dumas said he had seen several civilian victims at a hospital and had been told by one of its doctors that there were as many as 20,000 victims.
“At the moment we have been retained, we have a mandate on behalf of the victims of the military bombardment of NATO, who carried out their military action against civilians with the artificial — very artificial — cover of the United Nations,” Dumas said.