Version imprimableOn 23 August 2017, three days after obtaining his lawyer’s diploma, Salah Hamouri, was arrested by the Israeli army at his home in Jerusalem and arbitrarily placed "without trial and without charge" in administrative detention for six months, indefinitely renewable as provided for by Israeli law. A sentence that was renewed for four months on 28 February.
Salah Hamouri is officially due to leave on 30 June but his wife, Elsa Lefort, a French citizen from the Paris region, fears that his sentence will be renewed.
"At the so-called "mid-sentence" hearing on 22 May, the Israeli judge let the prospect of a three-month extension of my husband’s imprisonment hover," she said sadly.
Elsa Lefort, still worried, denounces "This arbitrariness [that] is an infernal machine. They affirm things without ever having to give proof and can add prison sentences to infinity.”
This is not the first time that Salah Hamouri has dealt with Israeli justice.
The then student was incarcerated between 2005 and 2011.
Salah Hamouri had been convicted by a military court of wanting to assassinate Rabbi Ovedia Youssef and belonging to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), an organization deemed terrorist by Israel. False accusations according to Hamouri.
A few months before the end of his sentence, Alain Juppé, the then [French] Minister of Foreign Affairs, had finally admitted that the case against Salah Hamouri was empty.
Translated from Le Courrier de l’Atlas. The Facebook page of the support group is here Libérez Salah Hamouri.
