RAMALLAH, April 28, 2011 (WAFA) – The Palestinian human rights organization, Addameer, Thursday condemned Israeli detention of Palestinian writer Ahmed Qatamish.

An Israeli military court had extended Qatamish detention by six more days while the Israeli police continue its investigation.

Addameer expressed fear that extending the detention will lead to lengthy interrogation and possibly administrative detention.

The Israeli police claimed that recent developments in their investigations require them to detain him for a further 11 days for interrogation. Although this timeframe was rejected by the military judge on the grounds that the evidence so far is not sufficient to justify prolonged detention, it was still decided that Qatamish would remain in detention for another six days to allow the Israeli police to continue its investigation.

The Israeli police request for an extension of the detention is based on its claim that Qatamish in recent months has become an active member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a claim which Qatamish had denied at the military court.

Israel arrested Qatamish on April 21 at his home in Ramallah. An hour earlier, Qatamish’s wife, his 22-year-old daughter and two other female relatives, including a 14-year-old child, were taken as hostages by Israeli troops to compel him to surrender himself. He was led to Ofer detention center in Beitunia, outside Ramallah.

According to Addameer, Qatamish is still being targeted for his writings and peaceful activism and not any “security” reasons as claimed by the Israeli authorities. In the 8-days Qatamish has spent in detention, he has only been interrogated once for 10 minutes, when he was first arrested.

Qatamish highlighted that the last time he was detained was in 1998, and since then has spent his time writing books and articles and lecturing at universities, and has never feared to make his opinion known regarding the arbitrary practices of both the Israeli and Palestinian authorities.

Qatamish has been the target of the Israeli authorities before on numerous occasions, notably spending five and a half consecutive years in detention without charge or trial in the mid-1990s.

He was first arrested by the Israeli authorities in 1969 and held for a few months. He was then rearrested in 1972, this time spending four years in prison. After his release, Qatamish spent 17 years in hiding from 1976 to 1992 to avoid re-arrest.

On September 2, 1992, however, he was arrested once more in the presence of his then 3-year-old daughter, and was subjected to torture and ill treatment during 100 days of interrogation, an experience which he vividly exposed in his prison notes entitled “I Shall not Wear Your Tarboush (fez).”

Qatamish was placed in administrative detention, a form of detention without charge or trial that is based on secret information made available to the military judge, and which can be renewed indefinitely. For the next five and a half years, his detention order was renewed every six months, making him one of the longest held administrative detainees.

He was finally released on April 15, 1998 after an extensive international campaign on his behalf, but has been prohibited from traveling outside the occupied Palestinian territory by the Israeli authorities ever since. After his release in 1998, he completed his studies in political science, devoted his life to writing and lecturing, notably founding the Munif Barghouti Research Center and teaching at the School of Humanities at Al-Quds University.

Y.Y./M.A.