JERUSALEM (AFP) -- Four Palestinian-Israeli lawyers have been arrested over allegations they passed letters from Palestinians in Israeli jails to the Islamic Jihad movement in Gaza, a police spokesman said Wednesday.
"An Arab-Israeli lawyer, a resident of Acre, is suspected of having collected letters from Palestinian prisoners held in Israel, who she was authorized to visit, and then giving them to three of her colleagues, who are also Arab-Israelis," spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said.
"They then passed these letters to Islamic Jihad in Gaza using an as intermediary the Mahajat Al-Quds organization, which was designated illegal in 2006," he added.
Israel considers the Islamic Jihad movement a terrorist organization.
"Documents supporting the allegations were found during searches at the homes of the four lawyers, and all are accused of links with a terrorist organization and corruption, for having received large sums of money" in exchange for passing along the letters, Rosenfeld said.
He did not identify the lawyers, but Israel's Haaretz newspaper named the female lawyer from Acre as 42-year-old Suhir Ayub.
Israel's Palestinian community numbers 1.3 million, about 20 percent of the population. It is made up of the 160,000 Palestinians who remained in Israel after its 1948 establishment, and their descendants.
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IOA claims arrest of 4 lawyers passing information to Islamic Jihad prisoners |
| [ 20/04/2011 - 02:03 PM ] |
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| NAZARETH, (PIC)-- The Israeli occupation authority (IOA) said it arrested four Palestinian lawyers from the 1948 occupied lands on allegation of transferring information between prisoners in Israeli jails and leaders from the Islamic Jihad Movement in the Gaza Strip. Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper on Wednesday said an indictment was filed with the central court in occupied Jerusalem against lawyer Suhair Ayoub for passing information on to Islamic Jihad prisoners from their leaders in Gaza and vice versa. The newspaper added that lawyer Ayoub has been detained until all legal proceedings against her end and the other three lawyers were released with restrictions. It claimed that Ayoub was passing messages about appointments within the ranks of Islamic Jihad prisoners, their incarceration conditions, and their activities in prison. |
