Early on Monday morning, Israeli forces raided the home of French-Palestinian human rights activist Salah Hamouri, before taking him into custody. The move came the day after he published an op-ed in Jacobin detailing the judicial harassment to which he and his family have been subjected for sixteen years.

The New Arab reports that yesterday Hamouri was taken from his home to the Ofer detention center near Ramallah. It cited a member of Addameer — the prisoners’ rights group for which Hamouri has long worked as a lawyer — saying that Israeli authorities have issued no information about his current status. His allies fear that the arrest could be the prelude to his deportation or even “administrative detention” — meaning up to six months in jail, without charges. The thirty-six-year-old has repeatedly been subject to such prison spells, from his teenage years to as recently as 2020, without ever being put on trial.

Hamouri has already spent a total of over a decade in Israeli prisons. Authorities paint him as a Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) “terrorist” and would-be assassin despite the lack of material evidence. Not only has Hamouri always adamantly denied such allegations, but the government of France, of which he is also a national, has also insisted that the claims are baseless. Upon his release following a first long spell in jail ending in late 2011, France’s then foreign minister Alain Juppé said that the “indictment file was empty.” Addameer has itself been branded a “terrorist” organization by the Israeli state.