Top Hamas official taken back to Saudi prison after hospitalization

Saudi authorities have reportedly transferred a high-ranking official of the Palestinian Islamic resistance movement Hamas to prison, weeks after he was taken to hospital because of health complications.

The Prisoners of Conscience, an independent non-governmental organization advocating human rights in Saudi Arabia, announced in a post on its official Twitter page on Thursday that Muhammad al-Khudari, who has been in detention in the ultra-conservative kingdom for more than five months, was back in Dhahban Central Prison in the Red Sea port city of Jeddah earlier this week after hospitalization in Mecca to receive treatment for an unspecified terminal disease.

On September 14, Hamas called on Saudi authorities to immediately release Khudari, who has been living in Saudi Arabia for over 30 years, and represented Hamas between mid-1990s and 2003 in Saudi Arabia. 

He has held other important positions in the Palestinian resistance movement as well.

Osama Hamdan, the head of Hamas’ international relations committee, said that those who work for Palestine should be honored and not put in jail.

“Over the past 30 years, the Hamas movement has gone through a lot of pain and abuse … We kept silent not out of weakness and inability, although we could have raised our voice every time. We are keen on retaining the nation’s compass towards the liberation of Palestine, and protect it against any sedition that will serve no one but our enemy,” he added.

“This is why we were silent about the arrest of Dr. Khudari and others. The Hamas leadership had made efforts to solve this issue peacefully, but we have reached a point where we cannot remain silent,” Hamdan pointed out.

Back on June 3, Lebanese Arabic-language daily newspaper al-Akhbar, citing informed sources who requested anonymity, reported that Saudi officials had been holding dozens of Saudi nationals and Palestinian expatriates in detention for months over affiliation to Hamas.

SS