AL-QUDS (AP) – The Zionist regime said it deported a Palestinian lawyer and activist to France early Sunday, claiming he has ties to a banned resistance group, despite objections from the French government.
The expulsion of Salah Hammouri underscored the fragile status of Palestinians in occupied east Al-Quds. It also set up a possible diplomatic spat with France, which had repeatedly appealed to the Zionist regime not to carry out the expulsion.
He was set to land in Paris just before 10 a.m. local time.
Hammouri was born in Al-Quds but holds French citizenship.
The occupying regime says Hammouri is an activist in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a group that it has labeled a “terrorist organization”. He has worked as a lawyer for Adameer, a rights group that assists Palestinian prisoners that the regime has banned for alleged ties to the PFLP.
He spent seven years in prison after being convicted in an alleged plot to kill a prominent rabbi but was released in a 2011 prisoner swap with the Hamas resistance movement. He has not been convicted in the latest proceedings against him.
The Zionist regime, however, claimed he continued his activities with the banned group, stripped him of residency, and placed him last March in so-called administrative detention — a status that allows the regime to hold suspected fighters for months at a time without charging them or putting them on trial. Hammouri was not charged in the current case, but the regime’s interior minister Ayalet Shaked ordered the deportation when his detention order expired.
France’s Foreign Ministry condemned the regime’s deportation of Hammouri after he landed in Paris, saying it has “taken full action, including at the highest level, to ensure that Mr. Salah Hamouri’s rights are respected, that he benefits from all legal remedies and that he can lead a normal life in Jerusalem (Al-Quds), where he was born, resides and wishes to live.”
The Israeli human rights group HaMoked, which had defended Hammouri, condemned Sunday’s expulsion. A Jan. 1 hearing on the matter had been scheduled, and it was not immediately clear how the regime was able to push ahead with the deportation.
“Deporting a Palestinian from their homeland for breach of allegiance to the regime is a dangerous precedent and a gross violation of basic rights,” said the group’s director, Jessica Montell. “HaMoked will continue to fight against this unconstitutional law.”