Sireen Khudiri, 24, Palestinian schoolteacher and organizer, has been arrested once again by Israeli military forces at 4:00 am on January 7, 2014. UPDATED January 8: Palestinian prisoner activist Myassar Atyani has reported that Sireen Khudiri was released and is returning home to her family.
According to reports she has been taken to Huwwara military point, and showed no papers or warrant to her or the people she was with when she was taken. This follows 8 months of harassment directed at Khudiri, who was previously imprisoned from May to July 2013, and has been subjected to frequent harassment ever since.
Seized by occupation soldiers on May 15, 2013, Khudiri was imprisoned for two months. She was then fined, placed under house arrest and prohibited from using the Internet; the allegations Khudiri faced were that she created a facebook page that could “harm the security of the state of Israel.” In September 2013, she was found not guilty – but ordered to not engage in political activism for five years.
When she was arrested in May as she drove to her hometown of Tubas, this was followed by 20 occupation soldiers storming her family home accompanied by 25 tanks and 100 soldiers stationed on the street, taking all of the computers in the family home.
Since her release in July, the violent harassment of Khudiri and her family has escalated. At 3:00 am on Tuesday, November 11, her family home was raided and her family presented with a piece of paper demanding Sireen report to Tayasir Checkpoint, an occupation military station; Sireen was not at home.
Sireen has since been unable to return home, due to the threat of the occupation army. On November 27, the home of Sireen’s brother, Waleed Khudiri, was invaded by 60 soldiers at 2:00 am. Waleed was then taken to the homes of several other Palestinians where they were interrogated as Waleed was held. He was interrogated at Hamra checkpoint until 7:00 am.
Sireen’s campaign has a website here, with a call to action: http://freesireen.wordpress.com/. Follow updates on https://www.facebook.com/
Take Action
Please contact your elected representative (eg Member of Parliament, Member of European Parliament, Member of Congress or Senator).
Ask them to urgently write to the Government Minister that deals with Foreign Affairs, and insist that pressure be brought on Israel to:
- release Sireen Khudiri and stop all harassment of her and her family.
Request that they contact the following people and institutions:
- Israeli Ambassador in your country
- Minister of Defence, Moshe Ya’alon,
37 Kaplan Street, Hakirya,
Tel Aviv 61909, Israel.
Fax: +972 3 696 2757
Click here to email the Minister of Defence and other occupation officials
(The West Bank is under military occupation and military rule. Legal decisions about the lives of Palestinians in the West Bank are made by the military occupation forces) - Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR)
Palais des Nations
CH-1211 Geneva 10, Switzerland
http://www.ohchr.org/EN/AboutUs/Pages/ContactUs.aspx - United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Occupied Palestinian Territories)
http://www.ochaopt.org/index.aspx
