Hamas MP free after 3 years
2009-07-06 22:18
Ramallah - Israel on Monday released a Palestinian MP with the Islamist movement Hamas, Ibrahim Abu Salem, who was held behind bars since the capture of an Israeli soldier in Gaza, Hamas said.
He was arrested amid a West Bank crackdown on Hamas in which more than 60 elected officials were detained, including a third of the then government and more than two dozen MPs.
Some were later released, but 36 remain in custody.
The crackdown came after Hamas and other Gaza militants seized Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in a deadly cross-border raid in June 2006. He remains in captivity to this day.
Hamas swept Palestinian parliamentary elections in January 2006 in a surprise rout of the long dominant Fatah party of President Mahmud Abbas. But the Parliament has been paralysed since the wave of arrests.