Senior Hamas operative freed after 20 months in prison

A senior leader of the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas has been released after spending 20 months behind bars under the Zionist regime, a Palestinian prisoners' advocacy group has claimed.The Palestinian Commission for Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs said Sheikh Hassan Youssef, the spiritual leader of Hamas and a member of the Palestinian parliament, was released on Sunday afternoon from Ofer prison in the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian Information Center reported.

Youssef has been arrested 20 times and has spent a total of 24 years in Israeli prisons, mostly under the so-called administrative detention policy, which allows the occupation regime to incarcerate Palestinians indefinitely without bringing formal charges or bringing them to justice.He was last arrested on December 13, 2021, after Israeli military forces raided his home in the town of Beitunia, west of Ramallah.After his release, Youssef reiterated in a statement that he would continue to defend the occupied city of Quds and the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound by all possible means.

He also said his latest arrest was for attending the funeral of a Palestinian martyr in Quds.Youssef is known for his advocacy of reform and for his support for prisoners and the oppressed.Since 1971, he has been targeted by the Israeli authorities because of his social and political activities. He was first arrested as a child at the age of 16.His second arrest took place in the early 1990s on charges of being affiliated with Hamas and it ended with his deportation to Marj Zuhur in southern Lebanon along with 417 Hamas and Islamic Jihad leaders.

He also served as Hamas spokesman until he was elected as a member of the Legislative Council.There are said to be more than 7,000 Palestinians detained in Israeli jails. Hundreds of detainees were held under so-called administrative detention, without trial or charge.Palestinian detainees continually resort to indefinite hunger strikes in an attempt to express their outrage at their illegal detention.

Israeli prison authorities keep Palestinian prisoners in deplorable conditions without proper hygiene standards. Palestinian detainees have also been systematically subjected to torture, harassment and repression.Human rights organizations claim that Israel continues to violate all rights and freedoms granted to prisoners by the Fourth Geneva Convention and international laws.