The Israeli Ministry of Interior has deported a Palestinian-French human rights attorney after accusing him of posing a security risk.
According to the government, Salah Hammouri, 37, was led onto a flight to France by police early on Sunday morning.
After officials suspected him of being a member of a terrorist organization, he was stripped of his residency rights as a native Jerusalemite.
Mr. Hammouri disputes the allegations, and human rights organizations oppose the move.
The French foreign ministry also voiced displeasure with the decision and decried “the illegal decision by Israeli authorities to remove Salah Hammouri to France.”
The Israeli interior ministry stated in a statement that Mr. Hammouri had “organized, inspired, and planned terror actions” against “Israeli civilians and prominent Israelis.”
The outgoing Israeli minister of the interior, Ayelet Shaked, praised the move as a personal triumph.
She said in a statement, “Justice has been served to the terrorist, who has been deported from Israel.”
“This was a lengthy and arduous procedure, and it is a remarkable accomplishment that I was able to secure his deportation just before the conclusion of my duties, using the resources available to me to promote the fight against terrorism.”
Mr. Hammouri is a citizen of France through his mother. He possessed Jerusalem residency rights – a system utilized by Palestinians in Israeli-annexed East Jerusalem that is susceptible to revocation by officials. The individual lacks Israeli citizenship.
The Israeli defense ministry labeled Addameer, a Palestinian legal aid, and prisoners’ rights organization, as a terrorist organization in October 2021, along with five other Palestinian civil society organizations.
Israel considers the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) to be a terrorist organization, according to the IDF.
In 2005, he was sentenced to six years in prison after denying charges that he attempted to assassinate an ultra-Orthodox rabbi and political leader.
Mr. Hammouri was seized in March, and the Israeli military commander in the occupied West Bank ordered that he be detained for three months without accusation or trial, a practice known as administrative detention.
Israel often uses such detention orders to keep suspected militants for months without prosecuting them or bringing them to trial.
After four months in captivity, Mr. Hammouri pleaded for assistance in a letter to French President Emmanuel Macron. Subsequently, he was labeled a “prisoner of high risk” and transported to a maximum security prison in the center of Israel.
He began a hunger strike in late September to protest his administrative imprisonment. He terminated it after 19 days, during which he was supposedly held in isolation.
He was warned he would be deported without a trial last month, but the deportation was delayed as his attorneys fought the case. His appeal was denied by the Supreme Court earlier this month.
Amnesty International criticized his expulsion, stating that he was “suffering a severe price for his work as a Palestinian attorney.”
“The deportation from the occupied Palestinian territory is a grave breach of international law and the Fourth Geneva Convention, as well as a potential war crime,” the organization noted. Additionally, it could be a crime against humanity.
And HaMoked, a Palestinian rights organization, described the expulsion as “a terrible precedent” and a “grave violation of fundamental rights.”
