Israel extends Palestinian journalist’s detention without trial, NGO says

Israeli authorities have extended by three months the detention without trial of a Palestinian journalist who had been due for release on Monday, a Palestinian NGO said on Saturday

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

"Israel is intensifying its policy of administrative detention and increasing the extensions of administrative detention," prisoners club spokeswoman Amani Sarahneh told AFP. "In particular it made this choice in the case of Omar."

Of more than 6,295 Palestinians at present in Israeli jails, 692 Palestinians, including two women and 13 minors, are being held under administrative detention, according to the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem.

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.

Israel says administrative detention is intended to allow authorities to hold suspects while continuing to gather evidence, with the aim of preventing further attacks in the meantime, according to the Times of Israel. The system has been criticised by Palestinians, human rights groups and members of the international community.

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

Israeli officials could not immediately be reached for comment on Saturday, the Jewish sabbath.

Nazzal was arrested on 23 April 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. Israel accuses him of "participation in a terrorist organisation".

Its Shin Bet security service said in April that Nazzal, 54, served in a top position at Palestine al-Youm television in Ramallah, which Israel closed on accusations of incitement to violence. 

Nazzal had left the broadcaster several months before his arrest, which Palestinians say is an Israeli attack on the freedom of the Palestinian press.

Israel says Nazzal was detained for "his involvement in terror group activities," not "because of his activity as a journalist".

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

The United Nations on Saturday expressed deep concern about "the deteriorating health" of another administrative detainee, Bilal Kayed, who has been on hunger strike for 67 days.

It added that the number of administrative detainees is at an eight-year high.

"I reiterate the United Nations' long-standing position that all administrative detainees - Palestinian or Israeli - should be charged or released without delay," Robert Piper, UN Coordinator for Humanitarian Aid and Development Activities in the occupied Palestinian territories, said in a statement.