Two journalists released in West Bank, one still in prison

The PA's Preventive Security Service freed Samer Khuaira, the Nablus correspondent for the London-based al-Quds TV station. Khuaira was arrested on January 24 after being summoned to the service's Nablus offices. He said that he and al-Quds TV were accused of having a bias toward Hamas, which he denied. Khuaira told CPJ that he spent a week in solitary confinement in al-Junaid prison in Nablus before he was transferred to a general holding cell in the same prison.

"We welcome the release of our colleague Samer Khuaira, but we're troubled by the ongoing detention of al-Quds TV ‎correspondent Ahmad Bekawi," said Mohamed Abdel Dayem, CPJ's Middle ‎East and North Africa program coordinator.‎ "We call on the Palestinian Authority to release Bekawi immediately."

‎Bekawi is the Jenin correspondent for al-Quds TV. He was detained after being called to the offices of Military Intelligence on January 26, Nawaf al-Amr, the West Bank coordinator for al-Quds TV, told CPJ at the time of his arrest. Al-Amr said on Monday that the station's lawyer was only able to see Bekawi at al-Junaid prison once, with prison officials present throughout the visit 

Also recently detained and released was Issam al-Rimawi, a cameraman with the PA-‎‎aligned Palestinian News Agency, al-Rimawi told CPJ. He was picked up by security forces on January 26, held at Beitunia Prison near Ramallah, and released on February 10.  

Since Hamas ‎‎took control of Gaza in June 2007, both Hamas and the Fatah-controlled PA ‎have ‎frequently detained journalists who ‎have not toed the respective official lines‎. Each party has a ban on the ‎distribution of publications they perceive as partisan.