Omar Nayef Zayed’s funeral to take place in Sofia on 10 June
by samidoun
Family, comrades and friends of former Palestinian prisoner Omar Nayef Zayed,
found dead in the Palestinian embassy in Sofia Bulgaria after seeking
sanctuary from extradition to Israel for 71 days, will lay him to rest
at his funeral in Sofia on Friday, 10 June.
Nayef Zayed,
52, escaped from Israeli imprisonment in 1990 after four years of
imprisonment, accused of participating in a Palestinian resistance
action against settlers in Jerusalem. He lived in Bulgaria for 22 years
with his wife and three children, all of whom are Bulgarian citizens,
and was a leader in the Palestinian community in Sofia.
In
December 2015, the Israeli embassy in Sofia demanded that the Bulgarian
government extradite Nayef Zayed on the basis of his original 30-year
sentence. Nayef Zayed took refuge in the Palestinian embassy in Sofia;
Palestine is recognized as a state in Bulgaria and its embassy bears the
full Vienna Convention protections of any other.
Nayef Zayed struggled inside the embassy, working with Samidoun
on a campaign for Justice for Omar and a legal team inside and outside
Bulgaria to fight the extradition. He was shockingly and surprisingly
found dead inside the Palestinian Embassy on 26 February 2016, bloody
and severely injured, having fallen - or been pushed - from a height
into the embassy's garden. The embassy had no guards, cameras, or
automated key lock system, making it nearly impossible to gather
meaningful evidence of who had been in the embassy with Omar that night.
Throughout his time in the embassy, Omar was heavily pressured by Palestinian Authority
representatives, including Ambassador Ahmad al-Madhbouh, to leave the
embassy and find another solution for his situation. Omar's comrades,
family and friends have gathered around the world demanding
accountability, transparency and justice for his death, revealing the
responsible parties and holding them accountable for their direct and
indirect roles in his slaying.
Samidoun
Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network mourns Omar Nayef Zayed with
his family and comrades. A Samidoun delegation will take part in the
funeral. We salute Omar Nayef Zayed, a veteran of the Palestinian
struggle everywhere he lived. He is a martyr of the Palestinian cause
who died resisting Israeli attempts to seize and attack Palestinian
prisoners and ex-prisoners everywhere in the world, defending not only
his own rights and freedom, but that of former Palestinian prisoners
targeted for repression around the world, and that of the Palestinian
people as a whole.
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