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Alert

MADA demands the release of journalist Abu Samrah

(MADA/IFEX) - The Palestinian Center for Development and Media Freedoms (MADA) condemns the Palestinian Preventive Security Service's arrest of Jordanian "alhaqiqa aldawliya" newspaper correspondent Qays Abu Samrah, on 23 June 2009.

His wife said that Abu Samrah received a summons on 22 June from the Palestinian intelligence service for the morning of 23 June, but members of the Preventive Security Service came to his house in the village of Sanniriya (Qalqilia, West Bank) at about 12:15 am (local time), searched it, confiscated his computer and then arrested him.

Abu Samrah was arrested on 22 February, by the same service and was released after two days of detention and interrogation about his professional work and if he was working with Aqsa TV.

MADA considers the arrest of Abu Samrah a violation of the freedom of opinion and expression, and calls for his release and that of all the detained journalists in the Palestinian National Authority prisons.

In a separate case, MADA congratulates Alalam TV correspondent Khader Shaheen and producer Mohamed Sarhan for the cancellation of their house arrest decision by the Israeli district court in the city of Jerusalem and renews its demand for the cancellation of the 14 June court decision to imprison them for another two months.