Palestinian journalist Tareq Abu Zayd, the correspondent of Hamas-run TV station Al-Aqsa, has been given an 18-month jail sentence by a court in the West Bank city of Nablus, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported.
The sentence was imposed by a Palestinian Authority military court on February 16. Zayd has been held for more than three months in Nablus, 60 km north of Jerusalem. The supreme court in Ramallah ordered his release on January 12 but the order was ignored. Zayd was arrested several times last year by militias loyal to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
“We call on the West Bank authorities to do what is necessary to free this journalist, who was just doing his work,” Paris-based RSF said. “We are astonished that the mere fact of working for Al-Aqsa is treated as a crime.”
Another journalist, Abdel Ghani Samara, the correspondent of the online magazine Chabab Al-Yawm (Youth of Today), was meanwhile arrested by West Bank security forces on February 19. No explanation has been given for his detention.
Zayd’s jail sentence and Samara’s arbitrary detention are symptomatic of a general increase in tension between Hamas and Fatah in the Palestinian Territories, RSF said.
