News / Palestine

Palestinian legislator gets six months in Israel jail without trial

Thursday, 13 July 2017 3:57 PM [ Last Update: Thursday, 13 July 2017 4:41 PM ]

Prominent Palestinian lawmaker and human rights campaigner Khalida Jarrar (File photo)

Palestinian prisoners' rights group Addameer says Israeli authorities have sentenced a Palestinian legislator and a senior member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) to six months in prison without trial.

Addameer said in a statement released late on Wednesday that 55-year-old Khalida Jarrar has been given a six-month administrative detention order, and a confirmation hearing will be held at the Israeli-run Ofer prison near the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah on July 17.

The “detention constitutes an attack against Palestinian civil society leaders,” the statement read.

On July 2, a large number of Israeli troopers raided Jarrar’s home in Ramallah and arrested her.

Her husband, Ghassan, said Israeli forces seized computers during the raid.

Israel's internal spy agency, Shin Bet, announced in a statement that Jarrar was arrested along with a Palestinian activist for “promoting terror activities,” without providing any further information.

Jarrar is one of the most outspoken critics of the Israeli occupation and has repeatedly slammed the Tel Aviv regime’s atrocities against Palestinians.

The Israeli regime has been denying the lawmaker the right to travel outside the occupied Palestinian territories since 1988. She campaigned for months in 2010 before receiving the permission to travel to Jordan for medical treatment.

In August 2014, Jarrar received a “special supervision order” from the Israeli military, instructing her to leave Ramallah to the West Bank city of Ariha (Jericho).

However, she set up a protest tent outside the Palestinian Legislative Council in Ramallah, where she lived and worked, until the controversial order was overturned later in September that year.

Israeli forces last arrested the Palestinian lawmaker on April 2, 2015 after storming her house in Ramallah. She was released from prison on June 3, 2016 on a suspended sentence of 12 months within a five-year period.

According to reports, a total of 13 Palestinian lawmakers are currently imprisoned in Israeli detention facilities. Nine of them are being held without trial under the so-called administrative detention, which is a policy according to which Palestinian inmates are kept in Israeli detention facilities without trial or charge. Some Palestinian prisoners have been held in administrative detention for up to 11 years.

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