Amnesty urges Israel to release rights defender held without charge

By Mucahit Aydemir
JERUSALEM (AA) – Amnesty International has called on Israel to immediately release a human right defender held under Tel Aviv’s administrative detention policy for another three months.

“The Israeli authorities must immediately release Salah Hammouri,” Heba Morayef, Amnesty’s Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa, said in a statement.

Hammouri, a French-Palestinian lawyer, works for Palestinian NGO Addameer. He has been held by Israel since March 7.

“Since March, the Israeli authorities have arbitrarily detained Salah Hammouri without charge or trial in an obvious attempt to muzzle his work on human rights. It is outrageous that he now has to serve yet another three months in detention,” Morayef said, terming Israel’s extension of his detention for another three months as "outrageous".

“Instead of Salah Hammouri going home to his family today, he is facing another three months of incarceration,” she said. “His detention could even be extended further and used against him to expedite his forcible deportation from Jerusalem.”

According to the New York-based rights group, Israel has been seeking to revoke Hammouri’s permanent resident status since September 2022 on the grounds of “breach of allegiance” to the state of Israel, putting him at risk of deportation.

Morayef also called on Israeli authorities to immediately release all those held in administrative detention “unless they are promptly charged with an internationally recognizable offence and tried in proceedings that adhere to international fair trial standards.”