BICOM

An Israeli Supreme Court appeal by a Palestinian prisoner waging a months-long hunger strike has been brought forward and will be heard this morning. The case of Khader Adnan, a leading West Bank operative of the armed extremist group, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, was originally scheduled to be heard on Thursday. Adnan was arrested on 17 December and later sentenced to four months of administrative detention. Adnan launched the strike a day after his arrest, protesting his detention, and has now been on strike for 65 days. He is currently under medical supervision at the Ziv Hospital in northern Israel. A military appeals court rejected Adnan’s appeal against his detention, thus enabling him to appeal to the Supreme Court.

Adnan case has drawn attention to the practice of administrative detentions which enables the state to hold terror suspects for four-month periods without charge. Evidence to justify the detention is often presented only to the military judges before approval. Britain, the US and Canada have similar legal measures to detain terror suspects without charge, where sensitive intelligence sources are involved. The system in Israel has, nonetheless, been challenged by some Israeli jurists who argue that Israel possesses the legal means to bring those suspected to trial, while balancing security concerns.