Israel court orders release of French-American professor

A Jerusalem court yesterday ordered the release of French-American Professor Frank Romano, following his arrest on Friday at the site of a Palestinian village slated for demolition.

According to Haaretz, Romano, 66, was freed under the condition he takes his return flight as planned on 25 September.

Romano was detained on suspicion of disrupting the actions of Israeli occupation forces at Khan Al-Ahmar. Unusually for a foreign national, the law professor was detained under military law.

According to a report in +972 Magazine, Romano’s lawyer, Gaby Lasky, “had requested that his detention hearing be held in a civilian court, which was granted and scheduled for 4p.m. on Sunday — over two days after his arrest”.

Read: Israel demolishes new Palestinian village, Wadi Al-Ahmar

However, “at 2p.m. Israeli police transferred him to the custody of immigration officials, who held a deportation hearing without informing Lasky or the court and were preparing to put him on a plane to the United States” (though Romano lives in France).

At the court hearing, the judge “rejected the government’s request to immediately expel Romano from the country and criticized the way authorities handled the request”.

“In all of the years that I have worked representing Israeli, Palestinian, and international protesters, I’ve never come across a situation in which the justice system was used to justify the secret deportation of a person [accused only] of nonviolent protest,” Lasky said in the hearing.