Former long-term hunger striker Thaer Halahleh was once again ordered to administrative detention without charge or trial on 4 May 2017. Halahleh was ordered to six months imprisonment with no charge and no trial, on the basis of secret evidence, by the Ofer military court; his detention is indefinitely renewable.
Halahleh was seized by Israeli occupation forces on 28 April 2017 after he was ambushed by soldiers near Bethlehem as he was traveling to his home.
He has been seized by Israeli occupation forces on multiple occasions and has spent over nine years in Israeli prisons, most of them in administrative detention, imprisonment without charge or trial. He was most recently released in October 2016; he had been imprisoned without charge or trial since July 2014.
Halahleh engaged in a 77-day hunger strike in 2012, winning his freedom from administrative detention without charge or trial in June 2012 alongside fellow administrative detainee Bilal Diab. He was arrested again in April 2013 and released in May 2014, before being once again arrested and imprisoned without charge or trial.
Halahleh suffers from Hepatitis C, contracted during a dental operation in Israeli prisons where improper sterilization was used. During his previous imprisonment, Halahleh was denied family visits with his wife and children for seven months, and received only painkillers as treatment for his illness.
Thaer Halahleh is now among approximately 600 Palestinians held without charge or trial under administrative detention; the end of the policy of imprisoning Palestinians without charge or trial is a key demand of the current hunger strike launched by 1500 Palestinian political prisoners on 17 April 2017.
