PLO official gives directly opposing statements to NYT and Arab media
Qadri Abu Bakr told The New York Times that prisoners' families salaries would change to match the families' needs, instead of correlating to prison sentence. He denied the statement to Arab media.
By SARAH BEN-NUNImage of Director of PLO Commission of Prisoners’ Affairs Qadri Abu Bakr, and text, posted to the Official Fatah Facebook page.(photo credit: Courtesy)
A PLO official told The New York Times one thing, and then told Arabic media outlets the exact opposite, the Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) has revealed.On November 21, Qadri Abu Bakr, the PLO's Director for Commission of Prisoners’ Affairs, told The New York Times that the Palestinian Authority's (PA) policy on terrorists' families' salaries will change.According to the report, until now, the families of Palestinian terrorists were getting paid compensation money that correlated to the time length of the prison sentence.Now, the salary will instead change to meet the financial needs of the family, regardless of the prison sentence length.“Economic need must serve as the basis... A single man should not be earning the same as someone with a family," he told The New York Times. However, two days earlier, on Thursday, November 19, Fatah's official Facebook page published a post affirming that the salaries of terrorists' families are "non-negotiable," and that the Palestinian leadership's position is "firm and will not change, regardless of the circumstances and pressures.”That same day, Bakr denied the statement to London-based media company Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, The New Arab.PMW, on October 1, exposed the statement as a ploy to redirect the money back to the terrorists.In an interview, Bakr said that there are 7,000-8,000 released terrorists who receive a monthly salary, based on the 2004 PA Law of Prisoners and Released Prisoners’ Affairs.Instead of simply distributing salaries, Bakr said the PA would now hire the released terrorists, often for the Palestinian Security Forces.To Anadolu, a Turkish state-run news agency, he said, on Wednesday, November 18, "the Palestinian [PA] government has begun to appoint former prisoners in the Israeli prison to governmental posts."
