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Sabri
was abducted in his sleeping clothes.
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By
Mustafa Al Sawaf, IOL Palestine Correspondent
OCCUPIED JERUSALEM,
October 15 (IslamOnline) - Israeli police Tuesday, October 15, abducted,
then released the top Palestinian Muslim official, Jerusalem mufti
Sheikh Ekrima Sabri, 64, in his Jerusalem home, his son and police said.
A
spokesman for the fatwa authorities in Palestine told IslamOnline that
the Israeli forces forcefully entered Sabri’s house at 8.30 am (local
time), barged into his bedroom and immediately abducted him in his
sleeping clothes.
Sabri
was released from the Jerusalem police headquarters at 12:15 pm (1015
GMT), an AFP reporter at the scene said.
"Some
of the newspapers have false reports, concerning some issues and I
clarified my positions," Sabri
told journalists upon his release.
"I
consider the case finished," he added as two plainclothes officers
escorted him home in an unmarked police car.
Israeli
Police sources said Sabri
denied supporting "terror" and claimed he advocated only
non-violent struggle in his speeches and articles.
But
they warned him they were sending their file on him to the state
attorney general, the sources said.
Earlier
on Tuesday, Sabri was dragged to the Mascobya detention center in
Jerusalem for no apparent reason.
Witnesses
said that a large number of Israeli police surrounded Sabri’s house
and “barbarically” entered Sabri’s house, giving “no respect to
his religious position.”
Speaking
to IslamOnline on the phone, Naela Sabri (Sabri’s wife) said that the
Israeli forces entered the house and detained her husband without
allowing him to even change his clothes.
She
said that he was abducted because of
his speech during the last Friday prayers in which he called upon
Muslims to go to the Al Aqsa Mosque for prayers, to defend it and to
defy the occupation forces’ decisions to prohibit them from praying in
the mosque.
She
said that Sabri is in Room 4 at the detention center and that his lawyer
Jamal Abu Tama has headed there to understand the reasons of his
client’s arrest.
"Today,
as a result of a recommendation by the Attorney General, Ekrima Sabri
was detained for investigation by the Israeli police," said Israeli
police spokesman Gil Kleiman, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.
He
said the investigation concerned comments made in June by the mufti in
the Palestinian newspaper Al Ayyam, regarding the right of Palestinians
to use “suicide bombers” against the Israeli occupation.
His
son Obeid said his father was ailing and had undergone open heart
surgery several months ago.
Sabri
has previously been abducted several times by the occupation forces
during the Intifada for questioning regarding his participation in
conferences and events outside Palestine.
The
last incident of the sort, was in September 17 after taking part in a
conference in Lebanon on the Palestinian Crisis, where he met with
Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, the head of the Lebanese resistance movement
Hezbollah.
Sheikh
Sabri was born in Jerusalem and has a doctorate from Al Azhar University
in Egypt on the “Islamic Endowment Between Theory and Practice”. He
has been the mufti in Jerusalem and Palestine since 1994 and has been
elected as head of the Higher Islamic Council in 1998. He has also been
the main speaker at the Al Aqsa mosque since 1973.
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