Palestinian MP gets six months in Israeli administrative detention
Khalida Jarrar, senior figure in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, detained on terrorism charges
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Prominent Palestinian politician and rights campaigner Khalida Jarrar has been ordered detained for six months without trial by Israeli authorities, who cited her work in a terrorist organization, a rights group said in a statement issued late Wednesday.
A legislator in the largely defunct Palestinian parliament, she was given a six-month administrative detention order, said the Palestinian prisoner rights group Addameer that she used to head.
Jarrar is a senior figure in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a Marxist party considered a terrorist organisation by Israel, the United States and European Union.
Many of its leaders are in custody and Jarrar has been jailed multiple times.
Israel has said she was arrested for her involvement with the PFLP.
A confirmation hearing will be held at Ofer military court on July 17, Addameer said.
The “detention constitutes an attack against Palestinian civil society leaders,” the movement said.
The Israeli army did not immediately reply to a request for comment on Jarrar’s case.
Jarrar was arrested earlier this month “on suspicion of involvement with terrorist activities and violent public disturbances,” according to an army statement at the time.
She was elected in 2006 to the PLC but the Palestinian parliament has not met since 2007 after elections were won by the Islamist terror movement Hamas.
Jarrar was heavily involved in cementing the Palestinian Authority’s bid to join the International Criminal Court, a PLO spokesperson said in 2015.
The PFLP, a Marxist party considered a terrorist organization by Israel, is second-largest faction in the legislative body after Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah. Jarrar serves as the group’s political leader.
The 54-year-old had only been released in June 2016 after 14 months in an Israeli jail for allegedly encouraging attacks against Israelis.
Israel’s controversial administrative detention policy allows imprisonment without trial for six-month periods renewable indefinitely.
Israel says it is intended to allow authorities to hold suspects while continuing to gather evidence, with the aim of preventing attacks in the meantime.
But the system has been criticized by Palestinians, human rights groups and members of the international community who say Israel abuses the measure.
The Times of Israel Community.