A Palestinian journalist who phoned Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas at home to complain about his firing from Palestine TV has been detained by the Palestinian security forces.
The journalist, Hassan al-Najjar, who works as a news director at the studios of Palestine TV in Ramallah, has been in detention since he made the unique phone call to Abbas’s home more than three weeks ago.
Najjar’s father, Thabet, told The Jerusalem Post his 33-year-old son was being held in a detention facility in Ramallah.
“My son has been in prison for more than 25 days,” he said. “This is real injustice. What crime did he commit?”
His son called Abbas on his private home phone to complain against his “arbitrary dismissal” from Palestine TV, he said.
“My son worked for Palestine TV for nine years,” he told the Post. “About four years ago, a dispute erupted between him and Ahmed Assaf, the director-general of the Palestinian Broadcasting Corporation. Assaf accused my son of bad-mouthing him and punished him by relocating him to the Palestine TV offices in [the northern West Bank city of] Kalkilya. Assaf and some of his associates have also filed defamation lawsuits against my son to get rid of him.”
Najjar was detained a few years ago for three months on suspicion of insulting senior PA officials, the father and a number of Palestinian journalists told the Post.
During the phone call, a recording of which was made available to the Post, Najjar appealed to Abbas to help him seek justice after he was fired.
The 85-year-old Abbas listened patiently to the journalist’s complaint, asked for additional details and suggested that Najjar call the head of his office, Saeed Lahham, to arrange a meeting to solve the problem.
When Najjar told Abbas he did not have a contact for Lahham, the PA president gave him a phone number by saying each individual number in it. Touched by Abbas’s patience and readiness to help, Najjar arranged to meet with the director of the PA President’s Office the next day.
But when Najjar arrived at the entrance to the Mukata “presidential” compound in Ramallah the following day for the meeting, he was greeted by PA security officers who arrested him and took him to a nearby detention facility.
PA media outlets have refused to publish anything about Najjar’s case out of fear of being punished by the Palestinian security forces, a Palestinian journalist from Ramallah said.
Najjar’s clan, based in the town of Yatta, near Hebron, has also failed to persuade Palestinian media organizations to publish appeals to Abbas to help their son.
A PA security source confirmed that Najjar was being held in custody in Ramallah on charges of insulting senior Palestinian officials in the past. The source refused to say whether the detention was connected to Najjar’s phone call to Abbas’s private residence.