Israeli court jails Palestinian over Facebook posts

Israeli court jails Palestinian over Facebook posts

An Israeli court on Monday sentenced a Palestinian youth from East Jerusalem to 17 months in jail on charges of incitement based on posts he made about Israel on Facebook.

Head of the prisoners' committee in Jerusalem Amjad Abu Asab said the Israeli magistrate's court in the city issued an unfair ruling against Bayoumi over Facebook postings.

Abu Asab added that the judge ordered the imprisonment of Oday for 13 months and added four suspended months because he had been in jail since December 16, 2014.

Muhammad Mahmoud, a lawyer for prisoners rights group Addameer, said that the judge sentenced Uday Mufid Ibrahim Bayomi to 13 months jail time, before adding another four months for a previous probation violation.

Bayomi was originally detained on Dec. 16, 2014.

There was no further information about what Bayomi had posted on social media.

In May, an Israeli court sentenced Sami Jamal Faraj Ideis, 28, to eight months of imprisonment with an additional six months suspended for activity on social media.Ideis was one of eight Palestinian men detained in December 2014 in East Jerusalem under the same charges.

His sentence came less than a week after another of the eight -- the former secretary-general of Fatah in Jerusalem Omar al-Shalabi -- was sentenced to nine months in an Israeli prison for Facebook posts.

Israelis on social media routinely and openly incite violence against Palestinians, especially during heightened periods of tensions such as this summer's military offensive on Gaza, but none have yet faced prosecution.