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Appeal hearing set for Palestinian-French activist jailed by Israel without charge

October 19, 2017 at 1:03 pm

French-Palestinian activist Salah Hamouri [Palestinalibre.org‏/Twitter]

The Israeli Supreme Court will this Sunday hear an appeal against the detention without trial of a prominent Palestinian human rights defender.

Salah Hamouri, a dual Palestinian-French national and field researcher for prisoners’ rights group Addameer, was given a six-month administrative detention order (no charge or trial) on 29 August by the Israeli occupation authorities.

Unusually, on 5 September this order was replaced with a three-month sentence, the amount of time he had remaining when released in a 2011 prisoner exchange. Yet on 14 September, the administrative detention order was reinstated.

The appeal will challenge the grounds and process of Hamouri’s initial administrative detention.

Read: Palestinian child narrates horrifying experience of 10-hour detention by Israeli forces

Addameer has reiterated its call for Hamouri’s immediate release, describing his detention as “an attack on Palestinian human rights defenders”. The NGO added that “organisations, activists and parliamentarians across France are mobilising to demand Hamouri’s freedom once again.”

According to Addameer:

Administrative detention, as a policy, is used by the occupying power to suppress Palestinian resistance through the arbitrary detention of those who use political and human rights-based means to struggle for dignity and self-determination.

The organisation considers administrative detention “to be a form of arbitrary detention which amounts to psychological torture” and “a grave violation of international laws and human rights standards”.