Human Rights Watch (HRW), which regularly lectures of human rights has finally been caught in praising an individual with direct connection to terrorist group.
According to media reports, Palestinian-French lawyer and researcher Salah Hamouri, who went on a hunger strike to protest his imprisonment without charge by Israeli authorities for the past six months is now proved to have link to a Palestinian terrorist group.
Media reports said, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a US- and EU-designated terrorist organization, inadvertently revealed on September 25, 2022 that Salah Hamouri—a lawyer and field researcher for the Palestinian NGO Addameer—is a member of the PFLP. Until now, Hamouri has strongly disputed such claims when Israel has leveled them.
The information was made public after the PFLP included Hamouri among 30 of its members who were being held in administrative detention and went on a hunger strike last week to pressure Israel into releasing them.
The article on the official PFLP Lebanon website explicitly names Hamouri, as does a different article on the main PFLP website from September 28.
Hamouri has been championed as a human rights defender by numerous NGOs and UN officials, including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, UN Special Rapporteur for the Palestinian Territories Francesca Albanese and more.
Additionally, Hamouri’s case has been addressed by the French government and President Emmanuel Macron.
Prominent media outlets have recently published articles about Hamouri, including one written by Hamouri himself while in detention.
Hamouri has served several prison sentences for his links to the PFLP. He was arrested in 2005 for planning a failed assassination attempt of Israel’s then-Chief Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, and was released in 2011 in the Gilad Shalit prisoner swap.
Hamouri is among the higher-profile members of six Palestinian NGOs that Israel designated as terror proxies of the PFLP in October 2021.
