Israel Frees Hamas Lawmaker

Israel freed Hamas lawmaker Mohammed Abu Tir on Wednesday after holding him prisoner without charge for a year, the Islamist Palestinian movement reported.

Abu Tir, a lawmaker for Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem, was first arrested in June 2010 and expelled to the occupied West Bank the following December after he refused to leave east Jerusalem despite an Israeli interior ministry order revoking his residency permit over his ties to Hamas

Then last September the Israeli military arrested him at his temporary residence in Kufr Aqab, a neighborhood near the Palestinian city of Ramallah, according to Hamas officials.

On Wednesday, he was released from Ofer prison near Ramallah, where he was held under an administration detention order that allowed for him to be held without charge, Hamas said.

Abu Tir has now moved into the Qalandia refugee camp near Jerusalem, the movement said.

Eleven of the 74 Hamas members elected to the 132-member Palestinian Legislative Council are currently in Israeli detention, and two lawmakers from the Fatah faction of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas are also behind bars.

Israel is also holding one lawmaker from the left-wing Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

Most of the Hamas prisoners, including two former government officials, were arrested in the West Bank.

The Hamas-dominated Palestinian parliament has been paralyzed since the Islamist movement took over the Gaza Strip in June 2007, ousting Fatah forces loyal to Abbas.

A majority of the Hamas officials were detained in the wake of the capture in 2006 of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in Gaza.

Shalit was released in October as part of a prisoner swap with Hamas.