PALESTINIAN LAWYER MOHAMMED ALLAN RELEASED

PALESTINIAN LAWYER MOHAMMED ALLAN RELEASED
Palestinian lawyer Mohammed Allan was released on 4 November after a year of being detained without charge. The Israeli High Court had ruled in August that his detention should be suspended because his life was in danger, after 65 days on hunger strike, but the Israeli military ordered him to serve the remainder of his administrative detention order. Mohammad Allan was finally released from Israeli detention on 4 November, when his second six-month administrative detention order expired. He was taken to Thabet Hospital in Tulkarem, in the occupied West Bank, and then returned to his home in the village of Einabus, near Nablus. Local media reports said that thousands of people came to greet him on his release.

While Mohammed Allan was on hunger strike between June and August 2015, Israel passed a law authorizing the force-feeding of Palestinians on hunger strike. However, Israeli medical staff refused to force-feed Mohammed Allan and the Israeli Medical Association declared the law to be “equivalent to torture” saying that “every physician has the right to refuse to force-feed a hunger striker against his or her will”.

Mohammed Allan stopped his hunger strike on 20 August after an Israeli High Court ruled that his administrative detention should be suspended due to his failing health, but Israeli police rearrested him on 16 September as he was preparing to leave Barzilai Medical Centre. He was arrested on the military commander’s order that he serve the remainder of his administrative detention order and was transferred to Ramle prison clinic and later to Ofer prison in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT).

Mohammed Allan was held without charge from November 2014 on the basis of “evidence” which was withheld from him and his lawyers, thereby denying him the ability to exercise his right to challenge his detention.  Israel uses administrative detention extensively, justifying it on security grounds while imposing it - in some cases - to supress freedom of expression of Palestinians.