Teenager Amal Muamar Nakhleh (UNRWA)
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) has called on Israel to immediately release Palestinian teen Amal Muamar Nakhleh, who has been held prison bars with neither charge nor trial since January 2021, reported the Middle East Monitor.
In a statement issued on Monday, UNRWA expressed deep concern about the continued arbitrary detention of Nakhleh, whose current administrative detention period is due to end tomorrow.
The UN agency explained that Amal has spent the last 16 months of his life in administrative detention, including the last year of his childhood, and is still being held by Israeli authorities without any charge.
UNRWA said Amal, a Palestinian refugee from Al-Jalazun refugee camp near Ramallah, turned 18 in January.
Israeli forces placed him under administrative detention for six months on 21 January 2021, then extended his administrative detention for four months in May of the same year, and then again in September for an additional four months, and three days before his eighteenth birthday. Occupation authorities renewed his administrative detention for the third time until 18 May 2022.
UNRWA, UNICEF and the High Commissioner for Human Rights have repeatedly called for Amal's immediate release and made joint appeals demanding his immediate release for "urgent humanitarian reasons".
It added that administrative detention imposed on Amal – without charge and based on secret evidence – is a form of arbitrary detention that is not permitted under international law, as it deprives him of the appropriate care required by his medical condition, and exposes him to further risks that exacerbate his medical condition.
Amal suffers from a rare and serious autoimmune disease and requires close medical monitoring. He contracted COVID-19 during a virus outbreak in the prison in late January, which put him in grave medical risk. Unfortunately, he has been unable to receive the medical care he needs, UNRWA has previously warned.