Israel on Sunday morning expelled French-Palestinian lawyer Salah Hamouri, who had been held without formal charges in Israeli prisons since March, Israel’s Interior Ministry announced.
Salah Hamouri “was deported this morning to France following the decision by Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked to withdraw his resident status,” the Israeli Interior Ministry said in a statement.
Salah Hamouri’s family and support campaign awaited a deportation Sunday morning on the Israeli airline El AL flight between Tel Aviv and Paris.
An eviction already postponed
Salah Hamouri, 37, was sentenced in March to three months of administrative detention, a controversial move that allows Israel to jail suspects without formal charges.
Suspected by Israel of links – which he denies – with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), an organization considered terrorist by the Jewish State and the European Union, Salah Hamouri had learned at the end of November that he was going to be deported in December to France.
But his deportation was postponed after military court hearings, and his lawyers challenged his deportation order and also the revocation of his status as an East Jerusalem resident.
Born in this part of the Holy City, annexed and occupied by the Jewish state, Salah Hamouri does not have Israeli nationality but has a residence permit, which the Israeli authorities have revoked, which he questions.
Expected delivery in the next few days
However, in early December, the Israeli authorities confirmed the revocation of his status, thus paving the way for an imminent expulsion despite a new hearing scheduled for January 1.
Since Friday night, the indications of an expulsion on Sunday morning had multiplied, in addition the Israeli Arab deputy Aïda Touma-Slimane had written on Saturday night to Defense Minister Benny Gantz to prevent the expulsion, however decreed by the Minister of the Interior Ayelet Shaked.
The ouster of Salah Hamouri comes as a change of administration in Israel approaches, with a handover expected in the coming days between the ragtag coalition of centrist Yair Lapid and a government led by Benjamin Netanyahu and his ultra-Orthodox and far-right allies. parties.
“It is a tremendous achievement to have been able to cause, just before the end of my term, his expulsion,” Ayelet Shaked said Sunday.
Source: BFM TV
