The call to the presidency is solemn. Franco-Palestinian lawyer Salah Hamouri, detained in an Israeli prison in the occupied West Bank that he describes as “Bastille”, called on French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday to “pressure” the Jewish state to demand his release.
In a letter consulted by AFP and sent on the occasion of the national holiday of July 14, the latter compares the Ofer prison, where he has been imprisoned since March, with the Bastille, and asks France for help to get out.
“Today with this letter, I simply want to remind you that I am in another Bastille that has the name of ‘Ofer’, located in the occupied Palestinian territories”, affirms the lawyer.
“I hope you have a little courage”
In June, Israel extended for three months his administrative detention – a controversial measure that allows Israel to imprison suspects without formal charges – by the Israeli military justice, which considers him a member of the PFLP, which he denies.
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) is a Marxist organization considered “terrorist” by the Jewish state and the European Union. And the Israeli authorities accuse Palestinian NGOs, such as Addameer, for which the lawyer works, of links to the PFLP, which they also deny.
In late April, the French Foreign Ministry said it hoped that Salah Hamouri “will be released and that he will be able to lead a normal life in Jerusalem, where he was born and where he lives, and that his wife and children will obtain the right to go there to look for him.” “.
The Palestinian rights activist was jailed in Israel between 2005 and 2011 for participating in the attempted assassination of Ovadia Yossef, Israel’s former Chief Rabbi and founder of the ultra-Orthodox Shass party, before being released in 2011 as part of a prisoner swap. which led to the release of Franco-Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.
“Today I feel, in all honesty, a fourth or fifth class French citizen, as long as France tolerates and authorizes this occupying state to prolong my detention without charge and without trial,” says Salah Hamouri in this letter.
“I hope they have a little courage to put pressure on the occupying state to demand my release,” concludes the French-Palestinian lawyer, denouncing a “double weight, two measures” between the Ukrainian and Palestinian defense.
Source: BFM TV
