26 Facts About Salah Hamouri

Salah Hamouri is a French-Palestinian lawyer and field researcher for the Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association.

Salah Hamouri was released in exchange for the return of the Israeli POW Gilad Shalit in December 2011.

Salah Hamouri, is a native Jerusalemite, resident in the one neighbourhood, Dahyat el-Barid, of Al-Ram enclosed within Israel's Jerusalem municipal boundaries.

Salah Hamouri is trilingual in Arabic, Hebrew and French, and has dual nationality, Palestinian and French, with French citizenship and an Israeli identity card.

Salah Hamouri was forbidden to reenter either Israel or the West Bank under military administration, for a period of 10 years, on the grounds that she constituted a threat to the security of Israel.

Salah Hamouri was first arrested and placed under administrative detention when he was 16 years old, in 2001.

Salah Hamouri has denied being a member of that organization, though he defends the movement as an integral member of the PLO and sympathises with its aims.

Salah Hamouri developed a plan, and suggested to another PFLP member that they kill Ovadia by shooting him while driving by on a motorbike.

Salah Hamouri was arrested on 13 March 2005 at the Qalqilya checkpoint while he was driving home to Ramallah.

Salah Hamouri was ordered to get out of his vehicle by soldiers, blindfolded and handcuffed, and arrested without explanation before being sent for detention in Jerusalem's Moscovia Detention Centre where he was held incommunicado under administrative detention for three months.

Salah Hamouri was kept in administrative detention for three years and eventually shifted to Gilboa prison near the Syrian border, where he learnt Hebrew in order to pursue courses given to prisoners there.

Israeli authorities had given him the option of either leaving Israel for 10 years or face 7 years in prison, Salah Hamouri preferred incarceration to the prospect of exile.

Salah Hamouri was eventually released on 18 December 2011 as part of a second tranche in a prisoner exchange deal between Israel and Hamas involving another French citizen, the soldier Gilad Shalit who had been captured by Hamas and used as a bargaining chip by Hamas for the release of Palestinian prisoners.

Salah Hamouri's release was conditioned on Ovadia's consent, which the latter gave reportedly in order to secure Shalit's release.

On regaining his freedom, when asked about his imprisonment, Salah Hamouri replied he had no regrets about the choices he had made.

Salah Hamouri's remarks were construed in Israeli media as confirming a desire by Hamouri that Ovadia be killed, a suggestion he rebuffed as a lie churned out by propaganda machinery.

Salah Hamouri changed his vocational interests from sociology to law, and enrolled as a law student at Al Quds University near Abu Dis in the West Bank.

Salah Hamouri subsequently enrolled in graduate school for a master's degree in human rights.

On 20 August 2017, having completed his legal studies, Salah Hamouri was admitted to the Palestinian bar as a qualified lawyer.

On 5 September, a date set aside to confirm the order, the Jerusalem Magistrate Court, rather than confirm the order, adopted a different decision, determining that Salah Hamouri was to serve the three months in prison remaining over from his 2005 conviction.

Salah Hamouri was arrested on Tuesday 30 June 2020 near a Sheikh Jarrah Health Centre while taking a COVID-19 test, preliminary to leaving on a flight to Paris the following Saturday, 4 July.

Salah Hamouri was then taken to the Moscovia Detention Centre and detained there for 8 days for "further investigations", until he secured release by paying a further $US290 to the $585 in bail money he had already posted, with an interdiction order not to speak for three months to a number of people, though he was not provided with a list of their names.

Salah Hamouri was given a month to appeal the decision.

The reason given was that it was believed that Salah Hamouri continued to be an active member of the PFLP and as such was classified as an internal enemy as part of Israel's ongoing war against terrorism.

In December 2022, Salah Hamouri was deported from Israel to France, with the Israeli Interior Ministry citing security concerns.

Salah Hamouri's deportation was condemned by Amnesty International, and the European Parliament.