The Israeli courts decrees the continuing detention of Abnaa elBalad leaders till the end of "legal" proceedings
Press Release – May 13, 2004
Judge Sokol, at the district court in Haifa, accepted the prosecutions request and ordered that Abnaa elBalad General Secretary Comrade Muhammad Kana´ane and his brother, central committee member Husam Kana´ane, will be detained until the end of the legal proceedings in the charges that where brought against them.
Typically to the dealings of Israeli courts in "security" charges brought against Arabs, the judge totally ignored all the claims of the defense lawyers and worked hard to pitch the contradictions and holes in the prosecutions claims. Most outstanding was his total oblivion of the fact that comrade Muhammad Kana´ane is accused only of political meetings, carried out in his role as a leader of a legitimate political organization, working for a democratic and peaceful solution to the bloody path that the Zionist racist regime is forcing on the Middle East. By criminalizing all Palestinian political activity as "terrorist", the Israeli oppressive apertures want to push us farther away from any political solution and into more bloodbaths.
As our comrades are already detained for more than 3 months, and as the court hearings for Muhammad and Husam is not going to start before July and September respectively, they are expected to spend a long period in prison even before being tried.
The court decision today, May 13, 2004, came at the very day when the leaders of the Islamic Movement, Sheikh Ra´ed Salah and his 4 comrades, completed a whole year in Israeli detention, while the court proceedings in their case is grounding slowly.
Israeli courts, together with the Shabak "security services", the occupation army and the police proves themselves once again as part of one racist oppression machine dedicated to the systematic uprooting of our Palestinian people.
Free the Abnaa elBalad leaders!
Free all Palestinian Freedom Seekers from Israeli Racist Prisons!
(Abnaa elBalad is a left patriotic Palestinian movement, active within the areas controlled by Israel since the Palestinian Naqba of 1948. It is calling for the abolishment of all forms of racism, the return of all Palestinian refugees, and the establishment of a secular democratic Palestine).