Press Release - January 31, 2005
After 6 months of being held in Ofer Detention Center (just outside Ramallah) as an administrative detainee, Chairman of the Board of Trustees at Addameer Prisoners’ Support and Human Rights Association, Abdul Latif Gheith, was released on January 27, 2005. Mr. Gheith, 63 years old, was arrested on July 29, 2004, by Israeli soldiers while crossing the Qalandya checkpoint between Ramallah and Jerusalem.
After 6 months of being held in Ofer Detention Center (just outside Ramallah) as an administrative detainee, Chairman of the Board of Trustees at Addameer Prisoners’ Support and Human Rights Association, Abdul Latif Gheith, was released on January 27, 2005. Mr. Gheith, 63 years old, was arrested on July 29, 2004, by Israeli soldiers while crossing the Qalandya checkpoint between Ramallah and Jerusalem.
Like all administrative detainees, the Israeli occupying authorities held Mr. Gheith on secret evidence unavailable to him or his lawyers. Israeli military regulations effective in the Occupied Palestinian Territories allow for the Israeli army to detain any Palestinian for a period of 8 days without providing reason for the detention. Although Gheith is a resident of Jerusalem and holds a Jerusalem ID card, he therefore is governed by different regulations of detention, the Israeli occupation authorities have dealt with Gheith based on military regulations in effect for holders of West Bank ID cards.
Abdul Latif Gheith, a prominent public figure in Jerusalem and the Palestinian community at large, has devoted his life to the protection of human rights and social justice activities. He has most recently focused much of his energy and activism on social justice and human rights issues as relate to violations of the rights of Palestinian residents of Jerusalem, particularly against the Annexation Wall that has created enclaves of Palestinian residential areas and suffocated Palestinian society. Mr. Gheith is a member of the Palestinian Civil Society Committee on Jerusalem and a member of the Higher Palestinian National Committee on Political Prisoners.
The specter of administrative detention is not unfamiliar to Gheith who, like thousands of other Palestinian activists, has been targeted by this form of arbitrary and debilitating punishment. In 1988, with the beginning of the first Intifada, Gheith was arbitrarily detained for 6 months and, following a brief release, was detained again in 1989 for another 6 months of administrative detention.
Addameer would like to thank all those organizations and individuals who supported the campaign to free Abdul Latif Gheith, and all who continue to support the release of all Palestinian political prisoners.