ktlight
3rd July 2011, 09:02
FYI:
July 1, 2011
After a furor in the British press, a political leader of Palestinian citizens in Israel remains in a British jail tonight. Authorities cut his speaking tour short by arresting him this week.
Sheikh Raed Salah said from prison that he "will not yield voluntarily to the deportation" and that his lawyers will challenge it in the courts. Tour organizers said Friday a formal appeal would be lodged by the end of the day.
Activists accuse Israel of putting pressure on the British government to harass Salah, and Salah himself said "Israel carries the full responsibility for his detention in the United Kingdom."
Leader of the Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel, Salah was arrested and handcuffed by police as he returned to his London hotel from a talk Tuesday night. Yet the UK Border Agency had allowed him to enter the country through Heathrow airport on Saturday, giving no indication anything was wrong.
UK police treated Salah like "a criminal"
Dr. Ibrahim Hamami, a London-based Palestinian activist told The Electronic Intifada on Wednesday that Salah had been given until 6 July to file an appeal against his deportation, and would also be able to seek release on bail. Salah had arrived legally on his Israeli passport without even being questioned, tour organizers said.
The police "treated us badly," said Salah’s translator Hassan Sanalah, who was with him during the arrest. Sanalah told The Electronic Intifada on Thursday that one policeman "tried to push me [and said] 'don’t interfere, I’m not talking to you, I’m talking to the man,’ to Raed Salah. I told him he doesn’t speak English but he didn’t care." They refused to let Sanalah accompany Salah to the station, and said they would use their own translator.
Tour organizers Lubna Marsawa and Samira Quraishy arrived at the hotel just in time to witness Salah being taken away in a police van.
"You felt for him," Quraishy told The Electronic Intifada yesterday. "He’s such a lovely man, so humble and so polite and so sweet. I felt so angry." Quraishy works for the Middle East Monitor (MEMO), a group that organized the tour.
Marsawa, also a Palestinian citizen of Israel, tried without success to accompany Salah in the police van. She described the situation as "very humiliating … arresting someone like him [as if] he was a criminal."
Marsawa added that police seemed to have have been given information that she and the other organizers were violent people. She described how a police woman ran at her, apparently "scared that I may attack them or something."
Libel proceedings filed
Salah has been in the UK speaking to the public and politicians about the Arab uprisings, and to help the Palestine Solidarity Campaign launch a new campaign on Jerusalem. Before the arrest he spoke at public meetings in London and Leicester, as well as a roundtable in Parliament with MPs and researchers organized by Liberal Democrat Baroness Jenny Tonge. Organizers were given no notice from authorities there was any problem, said Marsawa.
The arrest came after a campaign this week by pro-Israel bloggers and right-wing tabloids such as the Daily Mail accusing Salah of anti-Semitism, a charge he strongly denies. MEMO said the charges were an "absolute lie and a malicious fabrication" and that Salah’s lawyers had begun libel proceedings against journalists in three British newspapers, including Evening Standard London editor Andrew Gilligan.
Gilligan then claimed on his blog he had received no such legal papers, but the offices of Farooq Bajwa & Co countered Friday by releasing a copy of the letter they had written to to Gilligan on behalf of Salah demanding a retraction ("Who is lying?," 1 July).
According to Adalah- the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, Salah has never been charged with incitement or anti-Semitism in Israel. The accusations of anti-Semitism in the British press cited unreliable sources such as MEMRI, a discredited translation service run by a former member of Israeli intelligence.
The Palestine Solidarity Campaign meeting to launch the Jerusalem campaign at the House of Parliament’s Grand Committee Room went ahead in Salah’s absence on Wednesday evening, despite press reports it had been "banned" or moved to "an undisclosed location."
Was Salah banned?
source to read more
http://uruknet.info/?p=m79156&hd=&size=1&l=e
July 1, 2011
After a furor in the British press, a political leader of Palestinian citizens in Israel remains in a British jail tonight. Authorities cut his speaking tour short by arresting him this week.
Sheikh Raed Salah said from prison that he "will not yield voluntarily to the deportation" and that his lawyers will challenge it in the courts. Tour organizers said Friday a formal appeal would be lodged by the end of the day.
Activists accuse Israel of putting pressure on the British government to harass Salah, and Salah himself said "Israel carries the full responsibility for his detention in the United Kingdom."
Leader of the Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel, Salah was arrested and handcuffed by police as he returned to his London hotel from a talk Tuesday night. Yet the UK Border Agency had allowed him to enter the country through Heathrow airport on Saturday, giving no indication anything was wrong.
UK police treated Salah like "a criminal"
Dr. Ibrahim Hamami, a London-based Palestinian activist told The Electronic Intifada on Wednesday that Salah had been given until 6 July to file an appeal against his deportation, and would also be able to seek release on bail. Salah had arrived legally on his Israeli passport without even being questioned, tour organizers said.
The police "treated us badly," said Salah’s translator Hassan Sanalah, who was with him during the arrest. Sanalah told The Electronic Intifada on Thursday that one policeman "tried to push me [and said] 'don’t interfere, I’m not talking to you, I’m talking to the man,’ to Raed Salah. I told him he doesn’t speak English but he didn’t care." They refused to let Sanalah accompany Salah to the station, and said they would use their own translator.
Tour organizers Lubna Marsawa and Samira Quraishy arrived at the hotel just in time to witness Salah being taken away in a police van.
"You felt for him," Quraishy told The Electronic Intifada yesterday. "He’s such a lovely man, so humble and so polite and so sweet. I felt so angry." Quraishy works for the Middle East Monitor (MEMO), a group that organized the tour.
Marsawa, also a Palestinian citizen of Israel, tried without success to accompany Salah in the police van. She described the situation as "very humiliating … arresting someone like him [as if] he was a criminal."
Marsawa added that police seemed to have have been given information that she and the other organizers were violent people. She described how a police woman ran at her, apparently "scared that I may attack them or something."
Libel proceedings filed
Salah has been in the UK speaking to the public and politicians about the Arab uprisings, and to help the Palestine Solidarity Campaign launch a new campaign on Jerusalem. Before the arrest he spoke at public meetings in London and Leicester, as well as a roundtable in Parliament with MPs and researchers organized by Liberal Democrat Baroness Jenny Tonge. Organizers were given no notice from authorities there was any problem, said Marsawa.
The arrest came after a campaign this week by pro-Israel bloggers and right-wing tabloids such as the Daily Mail accusing Salah of anti-Semitism, a charge he strongly denies. MEMO said the charges were an "absolute lie and a malicious fabrication" and that Salah’s lawyers had begun libel proceedings against journalists in three British newspapers, including Evening Standard London editor Andrew Gilligan.
Gilligan then claimed on his blog he had received no such legal papers, but the offices of Farooq Bajwa & Co countered Friday by releasing a copy of the letter they had written to to Gilligan on behalf of Salah demanding a retraction ("Who is lying?," 1 July).
According to Adalah- the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, Salah has never been charged with incitement or anti-Semitism in Israel. The accusations of anti-Semitism in the British press cited unreliable sources such as MEMRI, a discredited translation service run by a former member of Israeli intelligence.
The Palestine Solidarity Campaign meeting to launch the Jerusalem campaign at the House of Parliament’s Grand Committee Room went ahead in Salah’s absence on Wednesday evening, despite press reports it had been "banned" or moved to "an undisclosed location."
Was Salah banned?
source to read more
http://uruknet.info/?p=m79156&hd=&size=1&l=e