The Palestinian Center for Development and Media Freedoms (MADA) welcomes the release of Ahmed Bekawi, Quds TV correspondent in Jenin city, on Saturday night (April 12). He was arrested by the Palestinian military intelligence service since the 26 January 2009.

 Bekawi said that he was released at 10:00, from Jneid prison in Nablus city, where he was transferred there, after three days of investigation in the intelligence headquarters in Ramallah, about his journalistic work and his personal life. In Jneid prison he was put in solitary confinement for three days, then transferred to a normal room for a month, during that period he was forbidden to talk to or visit the other prisoners, then they bring other prisoners in the room, and allowed him to mix with other prisoners. He stressed that he had not been subjected to torture or abuse, and that he was treated well.

MADA demands the release of other journalists detained in the Palestinian National Authority prisons: the editor in Al-Ayyam newspaper Fareed Hammad, who was detained on 29 July 2008, and director of Yafa press office Eyad Srour in Hebron city, who was detained on 14 October 2008. MADA seizes this opportunity to demand the halting of the journalist’s arrest, which constitutes a flagrant violation of freedom of opinion and expression.

On the other hand, MADA condemns the detention of Quds net correspondent and photographer Dyala Jwihan, by the Israeli police, for seven hours last Sunday (12 April).

Jwihan said that she was taking pictures of Jewish extremists within Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem at 1:15 pm, when the Israeli police stopped her and seized her camera, bag, and mobile phone. They transfer her to a police station in the old city, and an hour later she was transferred to the investigation police center also in the old city, where she was interrogated about her work, and that she was breaching the public order.

They told her that she is not permitted to film inside Aqsa mosque and Um Kamel tent, for fifteen days. She was released at 8:00 pm, after the returning of her confiscated belongings.

- Um Kamel tent was raised, after she was evacuated from her house in east Jerusalem last year, the place became a symbol for Palestinian resistance against demolishing and house evacuation by Israeli authority in East Jerusalem, a lot of local and international delegation has been coming to express solidarity with her