Franco-Palestinian lawyer Salah Hamouri, held without formal charge in an Israeli prison since March, is to be deported to France on Sunday, his family and a support group announced on Wednesday (November 30th). The lawyers “were notified orally that he would be expelled on Sunday. It’s heartbreaking, bewildering.”said his wife, Elsa Lefort.
Mr. Hamouri, 37, was sentenced in March to three months of administrative detention, a controversial measure allowing Israel to incarcerate suspects without formal charges.
His detention had been extended for the first time in June, then again in September, by Israeli military justice, which considers him to be a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). The Franco-Palestinian denies belonging to this Marxist organization, considered “terrorist” by the Jewish state and the European Union.
Mr. Hamouri had started on September 25, with twenty-nine other Palestinian detainees, a hunger strike to denounce his detention. He was then placed in solitary confinement in prison and ended his strike after about two weeks without eating.
Born in East Jerusalem, the part of the Holy City annexed and occupied by the Jewish state, Salah Hamouri does not have Israeli nationality but a simple residence permit, revoked last year by the Israeli authorities. French diplomacy had asked Israel in vain for Salah Hamouri to be released and to be able to live in Jerusalem.