Critic
silenced
Hussam Khader, an elected member of the Palestinian
Legislative Council, is on a hunger strike to protest against
his detention. Annika Hampson reports
Hussam Khader, an elected member of the
Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC), has been accused by
Israeli authorities of "directing and financing terror in the
Nablus area". Khader is the second member of the PLC to be
arrested, after Marwan Barghouti last April, and he has been
held in the Peta Tikva detention camp since his arrest in
Balata camp, near Nablus, on 17 March 2003.
Khader's brother
Ghassan said that the arrest took place at about 4am when
Israeli soldiers broke down the door of his house and started
shooting. "It was dark and bullets were flying everywhere,
they even fired shots into the bathroom and the kitchen," he
said. "Everything was destroyed, it's a miracle no one was
killed." Before reaching Hussam Khader's house, the soldiers
raided seven neighbouring homes. It later became clear,
however, that Khader was the only man they were after. "They
were shooting just to provoke us," his brother said.
When the soldiers
identified Khader, they pushed him against a wall, saying
repeatedly that he was a terrorist and they were arresting
him. All of his personal papers, his computer and files were
confiscated. He was taken away in a military jeep, leaving
behind his wife and three young children. His family has not
been allowed to see him since.
On 24 March, a week
after his arrest, Khader's lawyer, Ra'ed Mohamed, was allowed
to see him at the detention centre. According to Mohamed,
Khader is being held in a cell two metres by two metres and
has been subjected to sleep deprivation, tied to a chair and
interrogated, as guards insulted him and threatened to harm
his family if he doesn't confess.
Khader, through his
lawyer, described the Israeli charges against him as baseless.
Mohamed said his client is refusing to respond to
interrogators on the grounds that his arrest was illegal.
Khader's detention is
in breech of the commitment Israel made to the Palestinian
Authority not to arrest politicians, and his continued
detention violates his parliamentary immunity as an elected
member of the Palestinian legislature.
Prior to his arrest,
Khader, who is also the chairman of the PLC Palestinian
Refugees Committee, worked out of a small office in the Balata
refugee camp in the West Bank city of Nablus. He shared the
office with the Jaffa Cultural Centre, which helps more than
170 disadvantaged children escape the difficulties of refugee
life through art and theatre.
Ghassan Khader believes
his brother's involvement with this organisation is one of the
reasons behind his arrest. On Islamic holidays, Khader
explained, the Jaffa Cultural Centre distributes money to the
camp's poorest families, including relatives of those accused
by Israel of being terrorists. He explained that Israel may
have taken this fact and twisted it to accuse his brother of
funding "terrorist" oganisations with illegal donations from
Iran. Such claims, Ghassan Khader said, might also relate to
his brother's visit to Iran in April 2001 as part of a
parliamentary delegation to attend a conference on Palestine.
The real explanation
for the arrest, however, revolves around the changes currently
underway within the Palestinian parliament. Khader is one of
the most vocal critics from within the Fatah movement of
Palestinian President Yasser Arafat and his corrupt
government. Recently, Khader argued that the new prime
minister lacks the necessary support to negotiate a fair
settlement for the Palestinians.
Ghassan Khader said
some Palestinians have suggested that Israel wanted to remove
an outspoken critic of the new political set up.
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