LONDON: Several charities and human rights activist groups have asked French President Emmanuel Macron to act swiftly against the deportation of French Palestinian lawyer Salah Hamouri by Israel.
Israel announced on Thursday that it had stripped Hamouri of his residence in Jerusalem and was planning to extradite him to France, saying he was a “supporter of a banned militant outfit”.
French Palestinian faces deportation by Israel
French citizen Hamouri, has been held since March in administrative detention, allowing the Israeli authorities to hold suspects without payment – faces deportation as of Sunday even though he lives in Jerusalem.
His charge, as Israel’s Interior Ministry announced, is a “lack of allegiance” to Israel, first confirmed on June 29 last year. He was not convicted in the proceedings. Israel says that Hamouri is an active member of the banned Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, an outfit that Israel and the United States consider to be terrorists.
He was a lawyer for Adameer, a rights group that helps Palestinian prisoners banned by Israel for their links to the PFLP, and had already spent seven years in prison after being convicted to murder a rabbi. known, but released. in the prisoner exchange with Hamas in 2011.
Organizations like Human Rights Watch, ACAT-France, Amnesty International France, the Platform of the French NGO for Palestine and Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders call on French President Macron to immediately put pressure on the Israeli authorities to release Hamouri.
They said that the move set a dangerous precedent for defenders of human rights and defenders of Palestinians in Jerusalem, who could impose measures on this basis. Human rights lawyer HaMoked, Dani Shenhar, called the eviction of his home “a serious violation of a person’s right to live in his homeland”.
He continued: “As a member of the citizens of Jerusalem, Hamouri did not support Israel, the fact that this decision was made mainly on secret evidence makes the injustice more much.
Israel’s Apex Court this week cleared the way for his deportation after rejecting HaMoked’s appeal.
