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Palestinian Court Orders Release of Saadat, Israel Threatens Him
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Saadat |
GAZA
CITY, June 3 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - The Palestinian High
Court in Gaza Monday, June 3, ordered the release of Ahmed Saadat, the
head of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP)
jailed in Jericho under international supervision, as Israel condemns
the court order as “very serious.”
Saadat
was accused by Israel of alleged involvement in the assassination
October 2001, of hard-line Israeli Tourism Minister Rehavam Zeevi. The
court order posed the first major test for Palestinian President
Yasser Arafat's newly-signed law on an independent judiciary, reported
Agence France-Presse (AFP).
The
three-judge court ruled there was no evidence linking Saadat to the
assassination of Zeevi, a charge only leveled by Israel, Saadat’s
lawyer Raji Surani told AFP.
“We
call on the Palestinian Authority, if it respects Palestinian law, to
implement this decision,” said Surani.
Saadat
was detained May 2002 in Jericho along with five other men wanted by
Israel - four of whom had been given jail sentences by a Palestinian
military tribunal - in a deal to end the Israeli army’s siege of
Arafat’s Ramallah headquarters, where Saadat was held by Palestinian
security.
Saadat
was arrested by Palestinian security agents in January 2002 under
Israeli pressure.
Palestinian
security forces in Jericho, where the men were placed in a Palestinian
jail under U.S. and British supervision, said they had received no
order yet for Saadat to be released.
The
Palestinian Authority previously ignored court orders for the release
of a prisoner, and the Saadat decision will be a test of a new law for
an independent judiciary signed by Arafat in mid-May.
For
its part, Israel immediately slammed the ruling, and said it would be
going after Saadat.
“This
decision is very serious. If it ends up that [the decision] is applied
and he is freed, we will demand his extradition. He is an assassin,”
a spokesman for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Raanan Gissin, told AFP.
Israel
accused Saadat of ordering the killing of Zeevi, which the PFLP
carried out in revenge for the assassination of Saadat’s predecessor
by an Israeli helicopter gunship the August 2001.
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