The Israeli government, through a court order, was forced to admit to the sinking of a ship carrying Lebanese refugees off the northern city of Tripoli in 1982, reported Israel’s Channel 10 on Thursday.
An Israeli submarine torpedoed and sank the vessel, believing it to be transporting Palestinian fighters embroiled in Lebanon’s 1975-90 civil war. Twenty-five people on board were killed.
Israel had invaded Lebanon in 1982 and imposed a naval blockade.
According to Channel 10, which had filed a petition to the High Court of Justice against the censorship of its report on the incident, a local boat apparently tried to take advantage of a brief ceasefire and flee the area with a group of refugees and foreign workers on board.
The captain of the Lebanese boat and 24 others died in the Israeli strike. Channel 10 said there had been 54 people on board in all and that the boat had been trying to reach Cyprus.
The Israeli army only investigated the incident 10 years after it occurred, after the head of the submarine unit demanded a probe to glean operational lessons from the event, the report said.
The investigation found that while the captain had made a mistake, he had been acting within his operational orders. It noted that he had not fired on several other ships believed to be carrying Palestinian fighters due to suspicions there were innocent civilians on board.
“It was not a war crime and there was no misconduct, there is no place for legal action,” the report found, according to Channel 10.
