An Israeli court on Monday sentenced the head of the outlawed northern branch of the Islamic Movement, Sheikh Raed Salah, to 28 months in prison for “inciting to terror” in a series of speeches he made after a Palestinian attack in July 2017 killed two Israeli policemen at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in occupied East Jerusalem.
According to Aljazeera News, Salah has denounced the charges against him as false and said following his sentencing that all the proceedings in the case were “far from the truth.”
The summer of 2017 saw a spontaneous Palestinian uprising involving two weeks of civil disobedience and protests to pressure Israel to remove restrictive measures, including cameras and metal detectors, at the entrances to the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, which had been installed following the attack on the Israeli policeman at the holy site.
The Islamic Movement in Israel, which Salah founded in 1971, has an estimated 20,000 members and has been outlawed by the Israeli authorities since 2015.
