Council members beat up in front of Imad Awadallah residence, Palestine to investigate
Palestine, Local, 8/26/1998

The Palestinian government pledged to open an investigation into the violent showdown that broke out between a number of Palestinian protesters, including members of the Legislative Council, and Palestinian security forces on Tuesday.

PLC members and human rights activists demonstrated outside the house of Hamas activist Imad Awadallah to protest a siege clamped on the house by the Palestinian security forces. In the scuffle that broke out later, a number of PLC members were beaten up.

Colonel Jibril Rajoub, commander of the Preventive Security in the West Bank, said he was sorry for the outbreak of clashes between the two sides and said he personally had instructed an investigation to start to find out what exactly went wrong outside the Awadallah house.

Imad Awadallah was held in a Palestinian prison in Jericho until last week when he managed to escape. He was detained on suspicion of involvement in killing Mohyiddin Sharif, a Hamas bomb maker whose body was found after a mysterious blast wrecked an old garage in Ramallah. The Palestinian postmortem found that Sharif's body was riddled with bullets before the explosion. Awadallah was later detained and reportedly confessed to Palestinian interrogators that he killed Sharif.

Palestinian forces sealed off the area surrounding the house of the Awadallah family and prevented family members from leaving the premises, in what was seen as a means of pressure to force Awadallah into handing himself up to the Palestinian authorities. Rajoub promised that justice will take its course immediately after the investigation into the clashes between the PLC members and the Palestinian forces. He noted, however, that PLC members were also to blame for their failure to notify the Palestinian government of their intention to demonstrate outside the Awadallah house.

"The PLC members represent the law in this country and they should be a leading example for the rest of the Palestinians in abiding to the law," he said. Rajoub said that stationing Palestinian security forces near the Awadallah house was part of security procedures.

Previous Stories:
  Hamas suspicious of the escape of Awadallah   (8/18/1998)
  Ashrawi interview: Crisis of confidence between people and government   (8/7/1998)
  New Palestinian Cabinet announced   (8/5/1998)

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