On Friday, 21 November, Anan Yaeesh, Palestinian political prisoner in Zionist jails, along with Ali Irar and Mansour Doghmosh, will face his next court hearing in L’Aquila, Italy. The Free Anan campaign is calling for the widest participation in rallying outside the court and supporting them inside on Friday, 21 November, at 9:30 am, Via XX Settembre 68, outside the Tribunale de L’Aquila.
The prosecution will be presenting their closing arguments on 21 November, and reports indicate that the Zionist ambassador to Italy will be present in the court — making it more important than ever to show a strong presence to hold war criminals accountable and free Anan and his comrades.
Anan has been held recently in the high security Melfi prison, after he was transferred from the Terni prison, seemingly in retaliation for the popular demonstrations outside the prison in support of his release. This means he is further from both the L’Aquila court and from Rome, where his lawyers are based, deliberately hindering his defense.
While the imperialist Italian government under right-wing Georgia Meloni has repeatedly proclaimed its dedication to the Zionist colonial project in occupied Palestine, the Italian people have demonstrated their outrage against Zionist-imperialist war crimes, including demanding the release of Anan and dropping all charges against him and his co-defendants, Ali Arar and Mansour Doghmosh.
If you are outside Italy, you can still participate in supporting Anan Yaeesh alongside Ali and Mansour.
- Share this post, promote the Free Anan campaign, and use the posters below in your neighborhood or community.
- Visit the Italian consulate or embassy in your area; hold a solidarity picket, or deliver a letter urging Anan’s immediate release and the dropping of all charges against Ali, Mansour and Anan. (We also urge the immediate release and dropping of all charges against Ahmad Salem, a Palestinian refugee from Lebanon, imprisoned for the past six months for calling for action against genocide in Gaza.)
- Call the Italian embassy or consulate in your country and call on them to free Anan Yaeesh and Ahmed Salem, and to drop all charges against Anan, Ahmad, Ali and Mansour.
Anan is a 37-year-old Palestinian activist and a former prisoner in Zionist jails from Tulkarem in the West Bank of occupied Palestine. Active in the liberation movement during the Second, or Al-Aqsa, Intifada, he was imprisoned for 4 years in Zionist prisons and seriously injured after an ambush by colonial special forces in 2006. In 2013, he left Palestine for Norway before settling in Italy in 2017 and obtaining a residence permit there in 2019. At the end of January 2024, he was arrested by the Italian police in the city of L’Aquila, where he resides, then transferred to detention in the high-security prison of Terni — and now to Melfi — for alleged collaboration with the Tulkarem Brigades, an organization linked to the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades (one of the armed groups of Fateh, that continue to uphold Palestinian liberation rather than “security coordination” with the occupier.)
While the L’Aquila court rejected the initial attempt to extradite him to the Zionist regime in occupied Palestine on 12 March 2024, noting that he would be subjected to torture, Italian prosecutors arrested two more Palestinians one day before, on 11 March 2024 — Ali Irar and Mansour Doghmosh — accusing all of them of supporting the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades in Tulkarem. In September 2024, the court ordered Ali and Mansour’s provisional release, while the charges remained in place, but Anan has been continually imprisoned in a high-security facility.
On Wednesday, 26 February, Anan Yaeesh addressed the court, emphasizing the legitimacy of Palestinian resistance under international law and the necessity of confronting genocide. (Read his full statement here.) He noted:
“You want me to defend myself against the accusations against me, but I am ashamed to seek acquittal on charges that, for me, represent a source of honor. I do not want to defend myself against the accusation of having rights and having claimed them, or of having tried to liberate my people and my country from colonial oppression. I swear that I have no intention of being acquitted of the legitimate resistance against the Zionist occupation. The Palestinian resistance is one of the noblest phenomena known to history. On the contrary, I am ashamed to find myself in a warm room, even in prison, while children in Gaza die of cold, hunger, and thirst. I am ashamed of the humane treatment received from the prison authorities here, while my fellow prisoners in Israeli jails suffer the worst torture, oppression, and abuse.”
Anan’s trial has been repeatedly delayed, especially as the movement in solidarity with Palestine has grown; his supporters believe that these delays are a deliberate attempt to forestall a verdict due to the potential for popular outrage and action if Anan is convicted or, even worse, extradited to Palestine. The final hearings in the case were scheduled initially on 19 and 26 September, but due to the transfer of the associate judge, they have been rescheduled without applying the mandatory procedures to avoid interruption of the proceedings and the constitutional right to a trial without undue delays. The conclusion of the preliminary investigation is now scheduled for 31 October, with the prosecution’s closing arguments on 21 November and final closing arguments, including for the defense, on 28 November.
During the trial, the Free Anan campaign writes, “the prosecution failed to prove any involvement of the three in violent actions against either civilians or Israeli settlers. No breach of the limits imposed by international law regarding the right to resistance was shown. In fact, the prosecution failed to even prove that such events ever occurred. This confirms the political nature of a trial that increasingly appears an attempt to criminalize Palestinian solidarity and resistance.”
Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network urges all Palestinian, Arab and international activists and organizations for Palestinian liberation to stand with Anan Yaeesh, Ali Arar, Mansour Doghmosh and all Palestinian prisoners in exile and diaspora, and the international prisoners of the Palestinian cause in imperialist jails. Support Anan’s legal defense, protest or deliver letters to Italian embassies to demand that the trial of the three Palestinians ends with all charges dropped, and publicize his struggle for liberation as part and parcel of the struggle to liberate Palestine, from the river to the sea.
We have a sample poster in solidarity with Anan Yaeesh that you can download and use:
Discover more from Samidoun: Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network
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