Israeli accused of Islamic State links freed to house arrest

An Israeli schoolteacher arrested two weeks ago on suspicion of “being associated with the Islamic State,” was released by the Hadera Magistrate’s Court from detention to house arrest Sunday.

Salah a-Din Mohammad, 24, will be under house arrest for one week under “restrictive conditions” while the investigation against him continues in Israel and in Jordan, where he is believed to have acquired propaganda materials originating with the Islamic State, Channel 10 reported.

Police said on September 29 that they had arrested Mohammed, a teacher of Islamic studies at a high school in Kafr Kanna, a predominantly Israeli-Arab town in the Galilee.

A search of his house revealed books, documents and files relating to banned terror organizations, including an Islamic State flag, officials said.

The suspect “was recently in Jordan, and is being questioned by police in connection with being associated with the Islamic State,” police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told The Times of Israel at the time.

“We confiscated materials from his house, including computers and flags and other [items] connected with the Islamic State…he brought back the materials from Jordan, and the investigation is continuing,” he said.

Muhammad’s lawyer on Sunday denied his client had any connection with the banned Islamic group and noted that the state prosecutor’s attempts to extend his client’s detention had failed. The lawyer called the charges “a total fiction” and said the Islamic State materials were a “police and Shin Bet invention.”

Possession of materials from a designated terror organization, such as the Islamic State, is illegal under Israeli law.

Israeli officials, along with European governments, have become increasingly concerned about citizens traveling abroad to join Islamic State fighters in Syria or Iraq, where thousands of foreigners are believed to have joined the jihadist organization.

In early September, an Israeli citizen was found guilty of traveling to an enemy country and joining Islamic State during a four-month stay in Syria earlier this year.

The group was officially declared a terror organization by Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon earlier this year, giving Israeli officials wider tools to prosecute suspected members.

Some 10 Arab citizens of Israel have left the country to join the Islamic State, a Shin Bet security service source was quoted by the Israel Hayom newspaper as saying in September. An additional number are believed to have traveled to join more moderate rebel groups such as the Free Syrian Army. Several Israeli Arabs have reportedly been killed in Syria.