Israel forces arrest Addameer's legal unit coordinator

A senior staff member of Palestinian prisoners’ rights group Addameer has been detained by Israeli occupation forces, the NGO reported.

Ayman Nasser, 48, the coordinator of Addameer’s legal unit, was seized by soldiers from his home in the occupied West Bank on 9 September, and is being held without charge or trial in Ofer prison.

Nasser has been arrested on three previous occasions, the last of which was in 2014, when he spent more than a year under administrative detention (without charge or trial).

Nasser’s wife told Addameer that soldiers broke into the house at 2:00am, waking up the children and keeping “the entire family in the living room while they were searching the house”. The NGO added that there were some ten soldiers inside the house, and tens of soldiers outside the house.

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“They took all of our IDs and phones, and then they returned all of them but Ayman’s,” his wife said. “They also took Ayman and our two boys Ameen [20 years old] and Naji [18 years old] outside for interrogation. After half an hour, they allowed Ayman to say goodbye to us and to take his medication and they all left with him.”

Addameer condemned “the Israeli occupation forces for arresting its legal coordinator multiple times over the past few years”, describing his re-arrest as a “clear example of the occupation’s policy of systematically targeting human rights defenders”.

The group also called on “the international community to seriously work towards holding the Israeli occupation accountable for its crimes and to release all Palestinian detainees.”