Palestinian Prisoner, Nazzal Detention Extended

Rasa - Israel extended the detention, without trial, of Palestinian journalist Omar Nazzal by three months, who was due for release on Monday.

News ID: 422852

Date: 21 August 2016 - 23:36

RNA‌ - The Ramallah-based Palestinian Prisoners Club said it had been informed by Nazzal's lawyers that the senior journalists' union official would not now be released at the end of his current term, on August 22, New Arab reported.

"Israel is intensifying its policy of administrative detention and increasing the extensions of administrative detention," prisoners club spokeswoman Amani Sarahneh said.

"In particular it made this choice in the case of Omar."

His wife Marlene Rabadi posted on Facebook: "We were informed today that Omar's administrative detention has been extended by three months."

Nazzal was arrested on April 23 at the border between the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Jordan, from where he had been due to fly to a European Federation of Journalists gathering in Bosnia.

A military court ordered at the time that he be placed for four months in administrative detention, an Israeli measure allowing suspects to be interned for indefinite periods without charge.

He has been on hunger strike since August 4 in protest against his detention, and international organisations have called for his release.

The Palestinian journalists' union says that another 19 Palestinian journalists and students of journalism are in Israeli prisons, one of them for more than 20 years.

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