2014 prison census - Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories: Muhammad Anwar Muna

Muhammad Anwar Muna, Quds Press News Agency
Medium:Internet
Charge:No Charge
Imprisoned:August 7, 2013

Israeli authorities arrested Muna in a dawn raid of his house in Nablus, the U.K.-based Quds Press News Agency reported. The authorities also confiscated his computer and cellphone, news reports said.

Muna was being held under administration detention at the Negev detention facility in late 2014. Under administrative detention procedures, authorities may hold detainees for six months without charge or trial and then extend the detention an unlimited number of times. No official charges were filed against him.

A military court ruled on August 11, 2014, to extend Muna's administrative detention for four additional months, Quds Press News Agency reported. The ruling came after Muna and other prisoners waged a hunger strike protesting the practice of administrative detention, news reports said. Muna's health deteriorated and he was temporarily transferred to a hospital before being returned to the Negev detention facility in mid-2014, his agency reported.

Quds Press News Agency's correspondent in the southern West Bank, Yousef Faqeeh, told CPJ in November 2013 that the reasons for Muna's arrest were unclear but that the journalist had reported critically on allegations of Israeli human rights violations in the West Bank.

It was not clear which reports were written by Muna because Quds Press News Agency, which is critical of Israeli policies, does not use bylines.

In a separate development, a Palestinian magistrate court in Nablus sentenced Muna in absentia on April 3, 2014, to three months' imprisonment on charges of inciting sectarianism, according to news reports. The sentence set off solidarity protests by journalists who denounced the court's decision. The basis for the charge is not clear.

Muna's wife told the regional press freedom group SKeyes in May 2014, "We have not received the judgment papers from the court about his charge or sentence, and we do not know anything about the foundation of the charges against him levied by the Palestinian judiciary."

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