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<font size=3><br>
</font><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=5>Sa'adat Rejects Israeli
Interrogation as Illegal, Israeli Government Violated Agreement by
Kidnapping and Re-Trying Palestinian Prisoners<br>
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<a href="http://www.aljazeerah.info/News%20archives/2006%20News%20Archives/March/17%20n/Sa'adat%20Rejects%20Israeli%20Interrogation%20as%20Illegal,%20Israeli%20Government%20Violated%20Agreement%20by%20Kidnapping%20and%20Re-Trying%20Palestinian%20Prisoners.htm" eudora="autourl">
http://www.aljazeerah.info/News%20archives/2006%20News%20Archives/March/17%20n/Sa'adat%20Rejects%20Israeli%20Interrogation%20as%20Illegal,%20Israeli%20Government%20Violated%20Agreement%20by%20Kidnapping%20and%20Re-Trying%20Palestinian%20Prisoners.htm<br>
</a></font><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=3><b>Sa'adat Denies
Involvement in Killing of Israeli Minister <br><br>
</b>Arab News, Agencies</font> <br><br>
<font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=3>RAMALLAH, 17 March 2006 </font>
<br><br>
<font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=3>A Palestinian leader seized by
Israeli occupation forces in a raid on the Jericho, where he was
imprisoned in the West Bank jail,</font>
<font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=3>denied any responsibility for his
group’s 2001 assassination of an Israeli Cabinet Minister, his lawyer
said yesterday.</font> <br><br>
<font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=3>“I reject the accusations,” Ahmed
Sa'adat was quoted as saying by his attorney, who met the Popular Front
for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) chief at an Israeli detention
center in Jerusalem.</font> <br><br>
<font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=3>Four members of a PFLP cell
convicted by a Palestinian court in 2002 of carrying out the
assassination were also seized by Israeli troops at the jail after a
daylong siege.</font> <br><br>
<font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=3>Sa'adat was jailed by the
Palestinian Authority</font> <font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=3>in
connection with the assassination but was never convicted of the
charge.</font> <br><br>
<font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=3>At a news conference Sa'adat’s
attorney, Mahmoud Hassan, relayed defiant comments he said his client
made to Israeli interrogators.</font> <br><br>
<font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=3>“I told the interrogators I do not
recognize any interrogation,” Hassan quoted Sa'adat, 51, as saying. “This
is illegal. I rejected my presence in their jails as illegal.” Chief
Palestinian negotiator Sa'eb Erekat told a separate news conference he
had asked the United States and Britain to press Israel to hand “the
abducted men” back to the Palestinian Authority immediately rather than
put them in trial.</font> <br><br>
<font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=3 color="#FF0000"><b>Under a 1995
interim peace deal, Israel cannot re-try Palestinians if they have
already been tried by a Palestinian court for the same offense, he said.
<br><br>
</b></font><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=3>Israeli forces besieged
the Jericho prison, where Sa'adat had been held since 2002 under an
international agreement, to bring him to Israel for a re-trial after
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said he was prepared to free
him.</font> <br><br>
<font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=3>The troops moved in minutes after US
and British monitors supervising Sa'adat’s incarceration left the jail.
The United States and Britain said they had told Abbas a week ago the
monitors could be withdrawn immediately.<br><br>
Abbas described the Israeli operation as a crime that would not be
forgiven.</font> <br><br>
<font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=3>US Consul-General Jacob Walles met
Abbas yesterday and told reporters: “We explained the reasons why we
removed the monitors, which was because of our concerns about their
security, and he expressed his concerns of the event.”</font> <br><br>
<font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=3>The monitors were stationed at the
jail under an arrangement that ended a 2002 Israeli siege of</font>
<font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=3>the late Palestinian President
Yassir Arafat’s compound in the West Bank city of Ramallah, where Sa'adat
and the other PFLP men were taking refuge.</font> <br><br>
<font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=3><b>Around 61 Palestinians remain in
Israeli custody following a massive army raid on a prison in the West
Bank town of Jericho, Palestinian Interior Minister Nasr Yussuf said
yesterday. <br><br>
</b>“Sixty-one prisoners are in Israeli hands,” the minister told
reporters as he toured the site of the destroyed prison compound in
Jericho. “We call on Israel to release all the prisoners.”</font>
<br><br>
<font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=3>A punch-up broke out during Yussuf’s
visit after PFLP members called for the minister’s resignation over
Saadat’s capture and exchanged blows with Palestinian police officers, a
reporter said.</font> <br><br>
<font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=3>Meanwhile, Palestinian gunmen killed
an Israeli soldier taking part in a West Bank operation yesterday in
which five wanted men were detained, the Israeli army said.</font>
<br><br>
<font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=3>Elsewhere in the occupied territory,
gunmen shot and wounded two Israeli motorists near an illegal
Israeli</font> <font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=3>settlement.</font>
<br><br>
<font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=3>Israeli soldiers and Palestinian
fighters battled for more than an hour at a building the troops
surrounded in the West Bank city of Jenin.</font> <br><br>
<font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=3>“One of the men emerged running from
the building and an exchange of fire immediately erupted between the
forces and the gunmen during which one of the soldiers was killed,” the
army said in a statement.</font> <br><br>
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