British lawyers representing the leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), Ahmad Sa’adat, are considering suing the British Foreign Office over its decision to withdraw monitors from a West Bank jail minutes before Israeli occupation troops stormed the compound and detained the Palestinian leader.
Two Palestinian security guards were killed and 26 others wounded, five of them critically, in the Israeli raid, which drew rebuke from the Palestinian Authority, Arab League and the Organization of Islamic Conference.
Citing Sa’adat, Daniel Machover, of the London solicitors Hickman and Rose, said the monitors had indicated several times in the past that they would withdraw and had made clear that if they did the lives of the prisoners would be at risk.
The lawyers are building their case, if it goes ahead, on Article Five of the European Convention of Human Rights, which deals with the proper treatment of prisoners in detention, arguing that the British government knew of the dangers facing Sa’adat if the monitors left, The Independent reported on Saturday.
Sa’adat, who was abducted by Israeli forces after a nine-hour armed siege, will have to give his approval to the lawyers to initiate the case.
Sa’adat had been in the jail compound since 2000, despite a Palestinian High Court decision ordering his release.
He along with five others, accused by Israel of involvement in killing its tourism minister Rehavam Zeevi, were placed under foreign watch in the Palestinian prison as part of a political deal with Israel made at the end of the 2003 Israeli siege of the headquarters of late Palestinian president Yasser Arafat, who refused to hand Sa’adat over to Israel.
*this article was sourced from the Palestine Media Center
