According to his defense lawyer, Israeli authorities on Monday released Palestinian icon Sheikh Raed Salah after detaining him for 17 months. “Salah has been released and is on his way home,” Omar Khamaysi told Anadolu news agency. Hundreds of Palestinians held up green banners outside Megiddo prison in northern Israel to welcome Salah. The Higher Committee for Monitoring Arab Citizens of Israel, Israel’s highest representative body for Arab residents, is also planning a reception for Salah in his hometown of Umm al-Fahm. “Sheikh Salah was unjustly imprisoned and paid a price for defending the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque and preserving the principles of our people,” the committee said in a statement on Sunday.

A strong supporter of Palestinian rights, Salah has organized a number of protests against Israeli policies and campaigned against the expansion of Israeli settlements in the occupied territories. Since 2015, Israel has banned Salah from traveling outside the country for ostensibly related to “national security” reasons. The Islamic Movement in Israel, which Salah founded in 1971, has been banned by the Israeli authorities since 2015. In recent years, the same authorities have repeatedly arrested Salah and shut down dozens of organizations, including a number of organizations. charitable, because of their alleged links. to his group.

Salah, the head of the northern branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel, was arrested in August 2017 and charged with alleged incitement to criticize the erection of metal detectors in the compound of Al-Aqsa Mosque, the point of flash of Jerusalem. He was sentenced to 28 months in prison by an Israeli court. He served 11 months in prison, half of which in solitary confinement before being placed under house arrest. After two years under house arrest, in August 2020, Salah began a 17-month prison sentence for inciting violence.

An Israeli court in Haifa has rejected Palestinian political leader Raed Salah’s appeal for a 28-month prison sentence, after being convicted last November of “incitement.” Salah is a Palestinian citizen of Israel and a resident of Umm al-Fahm, a town south of the city of Haifa. He was the head of the northern branch of the Islamic Movement, which was banned by Israeli authorities in 2015. Speaking publicly for the first time since his arrest in August 2017, Salah told media gathered outside the district court in Haifa on Thursday that the decision was expected.

“The decision has no weight for us and we will enter prison as free people. We were free people before the prison, and we will live in the prison as free people, and we will leave the prison as free people, ”said Salah. “Praying in the Al-Aqsa Mosque is principled, and we will not ask the occupation to allow us to pray there. “

Summary of the news:

• Raed Salah, a Palestinian political leader, was released by Israel.
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