Hatem Qafaish, elected to the Palestinian parliament in 2006 with Hamas' Change and Reform bloc, was detained after Israeli forces ransacked his home last Monday. The PLC member was detained on 6 November 2007 and placed under administrative detention until his release in 2009.
Administrative detention -- detainment without trial or charge -- is regularly handed down to Palestinians seized in the West Bank and is often prolonged without hearing or appeal.
According to Israel rights group B'tselem, Israel's use of administrative detention "blatantly violates" internationally-recognized restrictions on its use.
"It is carried out under the thick cover of privilege, which denies detainees the possibility of mounting a proper defense. Over the years, Israel has administratively detained thousands of Palestinian for prolonged periods of time, without prosecuting them, without informing them of the charges against them, and without allowing them or their attorneys to study the evidence," the rights group says.
Meanwhile, a top Shin Bet official on Monday asked the Knesset to extend a temporary order that allows the security service to detain Palestinian prisoners for four days without a hearing, Israeli media reported.
"The security situation in Israel has not changed over the past three years and there is therefore a need to extend the temporary order," the Shin Bet's head of investigations told the Knesset's legislative committee, Haaretz wrote.
According to the Ad-Dameer Prisoners’ Support and Human Rights organization, Qafaish had been detained by Israel five times prior to his latest detention. He was elected to the PLC in January 2006 after campaigning from his prison cell.
Qafaish was also among the more than 400 activists Israel deported to Marj Al-Zuhur in southern Lebanon in December 1992. After returning to the West Bank in 1993, he chronicled his experience in exile in a series of articles in the Al-Quds newspaper. He intended to eventually to publish a memoir, but the manuscript was confiscated by Israeli prison guards.
IOA holds MP Qufaisha in administrative custody |
| [ 26/10/2010 - 09:17 AM ] |
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| RAMALLAH, (PIC)-- Hamas MPs in the West Bank denounced the Israeli occupation authority (IOA) for holding their colleague MP Hatem Qufaisha, from Al-Khalil, in administrative detention for six months. The Israeli military court in Ofer passed the sentence, which the Hamas lawmakers described as an evidence of the IOA inability to find a real reason or charge against the MP. They issued a statement on Monday calling for an urgent international intervention to stop such arbitrary rulings against Palestinian detainees, especially when such verdicts are routinely renewed for many years without the detainees knowing the reason for their incarceration. They said that remaining tight-lipped vis-à-vis such "criminal sentences" is a bigger crime than the verdicts themselves, lashing out at the world community and human rights groups for not budging to counter such practice, which they described as a violation of the international laws and norms. The IOA had kidnapped Qufaisha, 49, from his home on 18 October and held him in Ofer detention center in Ramallah where the military court on Monday night decided to hold him in administrative detention. Qufaisha, the father of six children, was held on many past occasions in IOA jails including three times after his election as member of the Palestinian legislative council in 2006. He spent more than 110 months in IOA captivity since the mid eighties of the past century over separate intervals. He obtained the doctorate degree during his last detention at the Negev prison. |
