The Palestinian Authority has arrested a reporter for the London-based Quds Press News Agency, the third such arrest in four weeks.
Yousef al-Faqeeh was arrested on January 16 by officers from the Fatah-linked Palestinian Preventive Security forces in the village of al-Burj, near the Judean city of Dura in the southern Hebron Hills.
According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, the Palestinian Authority security forces gave no reason for the arrest at the time they detained al-Faqeeh. His attorney later said he was accused of “inciting sectarian strife under the cyber crime law and was interrogated about articles he has posted and posts he has written on his Facebook account.”
The organization says this was the third such arrest of a journalist by the Palestinian Authority in the past four weeks. “One wonders whether the Palestinian Authority made a New Year’s resolution to arrest local journalists,” said CPJ’s Middle East and North Africa program coordinator, Sherif Mansour, from Washington DC.
