Dutch ex-PM: try Netanyahu as war criminal

Former Dutch Prime Minister Dries van Agt has acknowledged that the current Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu is a war criminal who should be prosecuted during his visit this week to the Netherlands.

Van Agt made the suggestion Monday during an interview with the NPO 1 public television channel.

“There’s a war criminal coming to this country,” said Van Agt, 85, who presided as the Dutch Prime Minister for five years until 1982 for the centrist Christian-Democratic Appeal party.

“The occupation and expansion… building of settlements, of occupied territory, this is according to the Rome Statute, which is… the setup… the statute on which the international criminal court is based, in so many words, a war crime,” Van Agt said in his interview.

“So why should we receive someone who continues with such things, we could have sent him right away to the international criminal court, that would have been better,” he said of Netanyahu.