from: The Campaign to Free Ahmed Saadat, December 25, 2008
The Campaign to Free Ahmad Sa’adat denounces the absurd, massive sentence given to Ahmad Sa’adat by the illegitimate military court of the occupier today, Tuesday, December 25 and calls upon all to act, protest and demonstrate against this sentence and demand freedom for Sa’adat and all Palestinian prisoners!
Ahmad Sa’adat, a national leader of the Palestinian people, was sentenced on December 25, 2008 to thirty years in the occupation prisons for entirely political charges. His sentencing, produced by an Israeli military court, is intended as a mechanism for imprisoning the resistance and the commitment of the Palestinian people to seek freedom, justice, liberation and self-determination. This is the highest sentence delivered in the occupation courts for a political charge.
However, neither Sa’adat nor the Palestinian people will be swayed by this appalling sentence. This sentence, however, is political and requires action and solidarity in order to ensure that Ahmad Sa’adat is freed and this sentence becomes the mockery that it is.
Now is the time for demonstrations, petitions and actions in support of Ahmad Sa’adat and Palestinian prisoners. The steadfastness of these prisoners is an inspiration to all people around the world who cherish freedom. In the face of torture and abuse in the prisons, in the face of sentences meant to create hopelessness, Ahmad Sa’adat and the Palestinian prisoners continue to provide hope – please contact the Campaign today!
On the other hand, the occupier’s brutality, injustice and utter fear of the Palestinian people’s leadership shows in the illegitimate sentence served today upon Ahmad Sa’adat. This court, a mechanism to preserve and enforce an unjust, illegal military occupation, has sent down an invalid, lengthy sentence against a people’s leader who has spent his life to undo that occupation. It will learn, however, that it cannot kill the commitment of the people of the Palestine – and of the world – to seek freedom, by imprisoning and assassinating their leaders.
Maher Taher, member of the Political Bureau of the PFLP, speaking on behalf of the Front in an interview with Al-Jazeera, emphasized the complicity of the Palestinian Authority in Sa’adat’s abduction and imprisonment, as he had been held in PA jails for 4 years at the time, as well as the direct responsibility of the U.S. and Britain as strategic partners of the occupier, for this crime against Sa’adat and the Palestinian people.
Before the sentencing, Sa’adat called upon Fateh and Hamas to take real and meaningful action and serious and direct dialogue to ensure and rebuild national unity to confront the occupier.
Palestinian national political leaders from various trends strongly condemned the illegitimate court and its sentence, including the prime minister of the Gaza government, Ismail Haniyeh; the secretary-general of the Palestinian National Initiative, Mustafa Barghouthi; Ahmad Bahar, acting president of the Palestinian Legislative Council, Azzam al-Ahmad, chair of the Fateh legislative bloc; and Daoud Shihab, spokesperson for Islamic Jihad, all of whom labeled the military court and the sentencing as illegal and unjust.