Sabri was abducted in his sleeping clothes.

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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