Israel frees Hamas leader in West Bank after 16 months in administrative detention

Israel has released a senior leader of the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas in the occupied West Bank after holding him in prison without trial for 16 months, his son says. Hassan Yousef, 65, was arrested on April 2 last year after Israeli security forces raided his home in Beitunia town, west of Ramallah. Shortly afterward, an Israeli military court ordered his detention for six months. Administrative detention is a sort of imprisonment without trial or charge that allows Israel to incarcerate Palestinians for up to six months. The detention order can be renewed for indefinite periods of time. Critics of the Israeli regime and rights groups say the system is abused. Yousef is a co-founder of the Gaza-based Hamas and once a legislator in the now-defunct Palestinian parliament. His detention was renewed for yet another six-month period before he was given a four-month detention order. On Thursday, Yousef’s son, Owais, announced that his father “is now at home and is in good health.” Israeli security forces, he said, freed his father at a military checkpoint in the vicinity of Ramallah instead of letting his relatives and friends receive him outside the Ofer prison as everyone expected. The senior Hamas official had been imprisoned multiple times before. So far, he has spent some 23 years in different Israeli prisons, the Palestinian Information Center said.  Yousef was released from a previous 10-month prison term in October 2018. More than 350 detainees are under administrative detention, including women and minors. Such detentions take place on orders from a military commander and on the basis of what the Israeli regime describes as "secret" evidence. Some prisoners have been held in administrative detention for up to 11 years without any charge.