Israel extends detention of French-Palestinian lawyer Salah Hammouri

The Israeli authorities extended the administrative detention of French-Palestinian lawyer Salah Hammouri for an additional three months, the Wafa News Agency reported.

37-year-old Hammouri, has been in prison since March 2022, in administrative detention without charge.

The Addameer Foundation for Prisoners’ Care and Human Rights, in which Hammouri works, confirmed on Monday the extension of his detention and considered it “part of a campaign of harassment to suppress Palestinian human rights defenders.”

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The Israeli forces arrested Al-Hammoury on March 7, 2022, after storming his house in the town of Kafr Aqab, north of Jerusalem, and transferred him to administrative detention for a period of three months, and a day before his release date, they renewed his administrative detention in June 2022.

Hammouri is a field researcher at Addameer. It is noteworthy that he, spent more than nine years in detention, at intervals.

The first was in 2001 for a period of five months, and in 2004 the occupation authorities transferred him to administrative detention for a period of four months, then he was arrested for seven years in 2005, and in 2017, the occupation authorities re-arrested him administratively for a period of thirteen months, and also prevented him from entering the West Bank for two years.

Several years ago, the occupation expelled his wife, who was seven months pregnant, to France, after she was detained for three days at the airport, during her return to Jerusalem.

She was deported back to France and received a 10-year ban despite having a valid year-long multiple-entry work visa.

The couple now has a six-year-old son and a 16-month-old daughter, who live in France.

In October 2021, the Attorney General and the Minister of the Occupation’s Judiciary approved the decision to withdraw Hammouri’s identity card, and he was denied residency in Jerusalem.

In November 2021, Front Line Defenders revealed the hacking of 6 devices of employees working in Palestinian human rights institutions, using the “Pegasus” spyware, including Hammouri, and he is transferred in several prisons and is currently in Hadarim prison.

The Israeli Supreme Court is scheduled to hear the case of withdrawing the identity of the Jerusalemite activist Hammouri in February 2023.

On August 31, 30 Palestinian and international human rights organizations and institutions called for the release of Salah Hammouri, and the annulment of the decision to withdraw his Jerusalem identity, based on secret evidence.

In August, the Israeli army closed seven Palestinian NGOs in the occupied West Bank, after they were classified as “terrorist organisations,” including Addameer, in which Hammouri works.

Administrative detention is a controversial measure that allows the Jewish state to imprison people without charge for a renewable period of six months.

Amnesty International and several human rights organizations stated that Israel’s use of administrative detention is an inhumane act committed against the Palestinians to perpetuate the apartheid regime, stressing that it is a crime against humanity.

Currently, some 743 Palestinians are held in administrative detention, without charges in Israeli jails, according to human rights groups.

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