OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, (PIC)
Israeli prosecution filed incitement charges on Wednesday against the preacher of Al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied Jerusalem Sheikh Ekrima Sabri, according to his lawyer.
“An indictment was filed by the Israeli authorities against Sheikh Ekrima Sabri in the Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court,” lawyer Khaled Zabarqa said.
The indictment against Sheikh Sabri included two charges related to speeches delivered by the Sheikh in 2022 at two funerals of the martyrs Uday al-Tamimi in the Shuafat refugee camp in Jerusalem and Raad Khazem in Jenin refugee camp in northern West Bank, the lawyer explained.
Lawyer Zabarqa, one of the lawyers assigned to defend Sheikh Sabri, said, “The words used in the indictment “relate to the status of the martyr in the Islamic religion,” according to Al Jazeera Net.
Israeli authorities considered Sabri’s speech while offering his condolences to the families of the Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in Jerusalem and Jenin as “incitement to terrorism”, he elaborated.
Zabarqa asserted that “this is a politically motivated pursuit driven by Israeli extremist groups that have become an integral part of the Israeli government.”
The lawyer said that the Magistrate Court will set a date to consider the indictment, after which legal procedures will take place, “but we are not facing real legal procedures; rather we are facing political, intellectual, and religious persecution procedures with legal system abuses.”
Sheikh Sabri is a staunch critic of the decades-long Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories. He had been detained multiple times by Israeli forces since the second Intifada (uprising) which erupted in 2000 and was banned from entering Al-Aqsa Mosque in Occupied Jerusalem for several months.
