An Israeli court extended the detention of Palestinian prisoner Khalil Awawdeh for 16 months yesterday on the pretext that he tried to smuggle a mobile phone, according to the Palestinian Prisoners’ Association. Quds news Awawdeh’s lawyer, Khaled Zabarqa, tweeted that in addition to the extension of time, he was also fined 5000 Israeli shekels ($1400) and given an additional eight-month suspended sentence.
His detention was extended despite an agreement last year that he would be released on October 2 if his hunger strike ended. The protest strike ended on August 31 after 172 days. However, a day before his scheduled release, he was accused of having a mobile phone which he used when he was transferred from Assaf Harofeh Hospital to Al-Ramla Prison clinic, Wafa reported.
“We feel frustration and pain,” said Dalal, Awawdeh’s wife at the time, after the accusation against her husband. “This is a profession and it is not new to us that they want to destroy the joy and victory of Khalil after he took his freedom from them.”
Awawdeh is from Beit Idna in Hebron governorate in the south of the occupied West Bank. He has been detained since December 2021 and has been held under a succession of renewable administrative detention orders. Administrative detention allows Israeli occupation forces to detain Palestinians on the basis of secret evidence that their lawyers cannot see and detain them for renewable periods of up to six months without charge or trial.
Amnesty International has described Israel’s use of administrative detention as “a cruel, unjust practice that helps maintain Israel’s apartheid system against the Palestinians.”
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