News / Palestine

Israel extends Palestinian journalist's administrative detention for 3 months

Saturday, 20 August 2016 5:00 PM [ Last Update: Saturday, 20 August 2016 5:24 PM ]

Palestinian journalists hold placards and banners during a demonstration in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah on April 24, 2016, in support of their colleague, Omar Nazzal, who was detained the previous day by Israeli forces. © AFP

Israeli officials have extended by three months the administrative detention of Omar Nazzal, the famous Palestinian journalist who had been due for release on Monday, a Palestinian NGO says.

The Palestinian Prisoners Club (PPC) said on Saturday that it had been informed by Nazzal's lawyers that the leading member of the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate (PJS) would not be released at the end of his current term, on August 22.

“Israel is intensifying its policy of administrative detention and increasing the extensions of administrative detention,” said Amani Sarahneh, the NGO spokeswoman.

In a Facebook post, Nazzal's wife, Marlene Rabadi, confirmed the extension of his administrative detention.

Nazzal, 54, was arrested on April 23 at the border between the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Jordan, where he had been scheduled to fly to Bosnia for an international journalism conference.

An Israeli 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.

Israel's internal spy agency Shin Bet said in April that Nazzal had served in a top position at Falestine al-Youm television in Ramallah, which Israel forcibly closed on accusations of incitement to violence.

Nazzal had left the broadcaster several months before his detention.

He has been on hunger strike since August 4 in protest against his detention. International organizations have called for his release.

According to the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate, Israeli prisons are holding 19 other Palestinian journalists and students of journalism, one of them for over 20 years.

Tel Aviv has also shut down several Palestinian television and radio stations since last October amid escalating tensions in the occupied territories. More than 230 Palestinians, including children and women, have lost their lives at the hands of Israeli forces since then.

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