Saturday, April 10, 2010

Israel releases detained B'Tselem field worker

Ma'an - Israeli forces released a Palestinian human rights worker late Friday, hours after an arrest in the occupied West Bank village of Bil'in, near Ramallah, his colleagues said Saturday.

Haitham Al-Khatib, a field worker for the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem and a cameraman for the Popular Committee Against the Wall, was detained for entering a closed military zone, the army said.

B'Tselem, however, rejected the military's explanation. Israel's closed-zone order, instituted last month to stop the weekly anti-wall protests in Bil'in and neighboring Nil'in, does not apply to residents of the West Bank villages, a B'Tselem spokeswoman said.

An Israeli military spokeswoman confirmed that the army's closed-zone order does not apply to residents...  Full story