Middle East Monitor / April 12, 2022
Israeli occupation authorities yesterday transferred Jerusalemite legislator, Ahmed Atoun, to administrative detention for a period of four months, Quds Press reported.
The agency quoted his father, Muhammad Atoun, as saying that lawyer Fadi al-Qawasmi had informed him that his son had been transferred to administrative detention in Ofer prison, explaining that Ahmed had spent a total of 19 years in Israeli jails and that he was released in August 2021, after spending a year in administrative detention; containment without charge or trial.
Last Friday, the Israeli occupation forces arrested Ahmed from his home in the city of Bethlehem.
In 2010, the Israeli authorities withdrew his Jerusalem identity card and expelled him from the city after he ran in the Palestinian Legislative elections in 2006. He was later arrested on 26 September 2011 at the headquarters of the International Red Cross in Sheikh Jarrah in occupied East Jerusalem along with MP Muhammad Totah and former Jerusalem Minister Khaled Abu Arafa.
An Israeli court then ruled to expel him from Jerusalem, deporting him to the occupied West Bank on charges of “illegally residing in the city”, in reference to Jerusalem, after his identity card was revoked.
Israel has escalated the use of administrative detention against the Palestinians as part of the war against them.
Israel detains about 4,500 Palestinians in 23 prisons and detention centres and commits numerous violations against them, according to institutions concerned with prisoners’ affairs.
