The Hamas Movement has strongly denounced the unjust verdicts that were issued by a Libyan court in Tripoli against four Palestinians who were arrested over two years ago.
“A court in Tripoli issued unfair sentences against Marwan Abdul-Qader al-Ashqar his son Baraa Mu’ayyad Jamal Abed and Naseeb Mohamed Shuqair; however these Palestinians are guests of Libya its people and its leadership and they have lived in the country for education and to earn their livelihood” Hamas said in a statement on Monday.
A Libyan court affiliated with field marshal Khalifa Haftar on February 19 sentenced Marwan al-Ashqar to life in prison and the others to 17 years. They have been in detention since September 2017.
Haftar’s security and judicial authorities accused the four Palestinians of being members of Hamas forming a cell in Libya transporting weapons to Gaza possessing weapons and harming the country’s security and disclosing military secrets. Such accusations had been refuted by Hamas in a statement in February 2018.
Hamas affirmed that Marwan al-Ashqar who has been living in Libya since 1989 and the others did not interfere in Libya’s internal affairs or tamper with its security pointing out that the son of Ashqar was a 14-year-old child when arrested.
Hamas appealed to the competent authorities in Libya to immediately and urgently intervene to make every effort to remove the injustice that was inflicted on the Palestinian detainees and work on having them released.
