'Killings, torture, human shields': Palestinian billionaire demands apology from UK for 'mandate war crimes'

A Palestinian businessman has said he will file a petition asking the British government to apologise for war crimes it committed during its mandate of Palestine, according to reports.

Munib al-Masri, an 88-year-old billionaire and close friend of the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, filed the petition to ask for a formal acknowledgement and apology for abuses during British rule in Palestine from 1917 until 1948.

"[Britain's role] affected me a lot because I saw how people were harassed… we had no protection whatsoever and nobody to defend us," Masri told the BBC from his home in Nablus in the occupied West Bank.

"Britain should see the ways and means to compensate… [to] be brave and say: 'Sorry I did this'," he said.

The petition involves a 300-page dossier of evidence, which includes details of arbitrary killings, torture, the use of human shields, as well as home demolitions as collective punishment, the BBC said.

Two senior international lawyers - Luis Moreno Ocampo, former chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court, and the British barrister Ben Emmerson KC, former UN Special Rapporteur on human rights and counter-terrorism - are involved in the project.

Emmerson said the legal team has unearthed evidence of "shocking crimes committed by certain elements of the British Mandatory forces systematically on the Palestinian population".

"They are some of them of such enormous gravity that they would have been regarded even then as breaches of customary international law," he told the BBC.

Masri is due to present the file to the British government later this year.

The UK defence ministry said in a statement that it was aware of the allegations against armed forces personnel during the period and that any evidence provided would be "reviewed thoroughly".

Masri has previously been involved in filing a lawsuit in a Palestinian court seeking compensation from the UK for the "wrongs" caused by the Balfour Declaration.