Israel’s Magistrate’s Court on Sunday delayed the trial of the head of the Islamic Movement in 1948 Occupied Palestine Raed Salah.
Speaking with PIC lawyer Mustafa Mahameed said the Salah’s defense attorneys refused to listen to the prosecution witnesses after they found out that the Hebrew-speaking Israeli investigator added secret intelligence data to the case.
The lawyer said the court postponed the hearing to March 22 after Salah’s attorneys made it clear that they will not speak up in the case without receiving a copy of the new data secretly added by the Israeli prosecution to the indictments.
Mahameed also said that Salah has been locked up in an isolated cell in Ashkelon prison adding that in the next two weeks the defense panel will file an appeal at the Israeli court to end his solitary confinement.
Sheikh Salah is one of the most prominent anti-occupation icons in territories occupied in 1948 (Israel). He is now being charged for public speeches given about Al-Aqsa Mosque and at the funerals of slain Palestinian protesters.
Despite the highly public and political nature of the case Israeli adjudicators banned filming in the court in Salah’s case claiming that “the case does not concern the public.”
Salah has been arrested on multiple occasions and was released in January 2017 after being imprisoned for nine months on charges relating to a sermon he delivered in Jerusalem in 2007; he spent most of his imprisonment in solitary confinement and was threatened with extended sentencing before release.
His detention has been repeatedly extended since he was seized by Israeli forces on 15 August who invaded his home in Umm al-Fahm.
According to Salah’s defense panel the judicial grounds for this case are trivial. His trial is only about his outspoken defense of Al-Aqsa Mosque.
