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Palestinian deputy prime minister Nasser Shaer was released by an Israeli court on Wednesday. (AP file)
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| By Associated Press September 27, 2006 |
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An Israeli court on Wednesday released the Palestinian deputy prime minister, the highest ranking Hamas official arrested in a crackdown on the Islamic militant group, but more than 30 other top government officials remained in Israeli custody.
Israel rounded up the Hamas leaders after Gaza militants linked to the violent group captured an Israeli soldier in a June 25 cross border raid. The arrests were seen as a move to collect bargaining chips to force the militants to release the soldier, Cpl. Gilad Shalit.
Israel also launched a widescale offensive in Gaza on June 28 that has killed more than 200 people, most of them militants.
Nasser Shaer, who had managed to evade arrest for several weeks, was finally captured Aug. 19, but he was never charged, said his lawyer, Osama al-Saadi.
The Israeli army and police confirmed that an Israeli court ordered Shaer freed Wednesday, and he was being sent back to his home in the West Bank city of Nablus.
"There was no basis for his arrest. This is natural," al-Saadi said, referring to Shaer's release.
A total of 30 lawmakers and four Cabinet ministers remain in custody, charged with belonging to an illegal group. On Monday, another military court in the West Bank declined to release 21 of those detained officials on bail. A hearing for the 13 others is scheduled for Oct. 5.
Under Wednesday's court order, Shaer must stay out of Ramallah, home of the Palestinian government, for two weeks.
Ghazi Hamad, spokesman for the Hamas-led government, said Shaer's detention was "political and illegal" and that the charges against the other officials were "fabricated."
"If this was a goodwill gesture, it is better to release the other ministers and lawmakers, whose arrest was political extortion from the outset," he said.
The chief of Israel's Shin Bet security service, Yuval Diskin, on Wednesday accused Egypt of allowing Palestinian militants to smuggle 19 tons of weapons into Gaza -- much of it through tunnels -- since Israel withdrew from Gaza last year.
"The Egyptians know who the smugglers are and don't deal with them," Diskin told Israel's Cabinet, according to a participant in the meeting. "They received intelligence on this from us and didn't use it."
The ongoing Gaza offensive has added to the widespread hardship in the impoverished Gaza Strip, which has been hit hard by international sanctions imposed on the Hamas-led Palestinian government.
Gaza has suffered widespread power outages since the start of the offensive, when Israel bombed the area's only power plant, which provides more than half the territory's electricity.
An Israeli human rights group on Wednesday accused the army of war crimes for bombing the plant. B'tselem said the army illegally targeted a civilian installation. The army did not return messages seeking comment on the report.
"There was no apparent military basis for the action, and it seems that its intention was to satisfy a desire for revenge," B'tselem said in a report.
Electricity is still off for half the day in much of Gaza, severely hampering hospitals, and straining the water supply and sewage systems, the report said.
It noted the case of 52-year-old Ahmad Thabit, who suffered a blood clot in his right arm when the power went out for seven minutes as he underwent routine dialysis treatment.
"The 1.4 million residents of the Gaza Strip, Ahmad Thabit among them...continue to suffer the bombing's harsh effects," the report said.
B'tselem demanded Israel investigate the bombing and cover the expenses of fixing the plant.
With Shalit still in captivity, Israel shows no signs of ending the offensive. Egypt has unsuccessfully tried to broker a deal trading Shalit for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.
Israel's vice premier, Shimon Peres, accused Hamas' exiled leadership in Damascus, Syria, of blocking a deal.
"The one who increases the tension in Gaza is the (Hamas) leadership in Syria," Peres told The Associated Press. "They prevent the Palestinians from releasing the prisoner, which increases the tension all the time and the focus must be on this extreme leadership in Damascus."
Egypt recently sent a letter to Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal demanding Shalit's immediate release to avoid a worsening crisis, Palestinian officials and Arab diplomats said.
Moussa Abu Marzouk, deputy leader of Hamas' political bureau, denied Peres' accusation and said Israel was "wasting time."
He also denied that Hamas was under pressure to release the soldier.
"We are keen to make the Egyptian mediation a success," he said, but added: "Until now, we are not any closer to having the requests of Hamas for the soldier's release met."
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