1. Issa Amro is a Palestinian activist based in Hebron, West Bank.
27 Facts About Issa Amro
1. 2.
Issa Amro is the co-founder and former coordinator of the grassroots group Youth Against Settlements.
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At present, Issa Amro is being indicted by the Israeli military court with 18 charges against him.
4.
In September 2017, Issa Amro was arrested by the Palestinian Authority for using Facebook to criticise the PA for arresting a journalist.
5.
In late September, 2017, after being released on bail, Issa Amro met Bernie Sanders and members of Congress in Washington DC.
6.
Issa Amro grew up in the Hebron's Old City near Shuhada Street in an area that is closed to Palestinians.
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Issa Amro, who was then in his last year of an engineering degree, decided to take action against the closures.
8.
Issa Amro describes this victory as his gateway into resistance against the occupation.
9.
Issa Amro took inspiration from known human rights defenders, such as Martin Luther King Jr.
10.
Issa Amro became part of B'Tselem and won the One World Media award in 2009 for the "Shooting Back" camera project, which he coordinated in Hebron.
11.
In 2008, B'Tselem reported an occasion where Issa Amro himself was prevented from documenting Israeli settler disturbances, after which he was then beaten and arrested by Israeli military.
12.
Issa Amro is the coordinator Youth Against Settlements, which he describes as his major project to involve young Palestinians in nonviolent resistance against the Israeli occupation.
13.
Issa Amro stated that his dream is to see nonviolence used as the methodology for a massive Palestinian resistance against the occupation.
14.
Issa Amro co-founded YAS in 2007 as a group that documents and protests against human rights violations.
15.
Issa Amro stated that he felt more worried about being shot by the Israeli army during these times than ever before.
16.
Issa Amro wrote an article for the Huffington Post in response to the Hebron shooting incident in March, 2016.
17.
Issa Amro was arrested and detained twenty times in 2012 without any charges filed against him, and on a further six occasions in 2013 up to the point that the aforesaid statement was written.
18.
Issa Amro was hospitalized more than five hours later and summoned to the same police station the next day.
19.
Issa Amro stated in a regular session of the UN Human Rights Council in 2013 that according to his Israeli lawyer, all his arrests were arbitrary.
20.
In 2014, Haaretz reported that an Israeli soldier stated that he only protects Jews, and proceeded to insult Issa Amro and threaten to shoot him.
21.
On February 26,2016, Issa Amro took part in a nonviolent demonstration calling for an end to the restrictions imposed on Hebron's Al-Shuhada Street.
22.
Issa Amro was released the following day after being notified that he should to expect an invitation to appear in court.
23.
Shortly afterwards, Issa Amro was indicted by an Israeli military court, and now faces 18 separate charges referring to putative infractions between 2010 and 2016.
24.
The appeal was sent to Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, and called for the charges against Issa Amro to be dropped and for an end to the harassment against him.
25.
Issa Amro would have faced trial on the 25th of September, 2016, but it was postponed.
26.
President Abbas has been criticized for the decree under which Issa Amro was arrested which uses words such as "harming national unity" and references to "social fabric".
27.
Issa Amro has complained that the decree is an attack on freedom of expression Diana Buttu, commenting on the law, parallels between the PA actions and Israel's crackdown on dissent with the occupation, stated:.