Khader Adnan, Palestinian hero and long-term hunger striker, released

12 July 2015

 - Palestinian activist and political prisoner Khader Adnan was released this morning, 12 July, following a 55-day hunger strike in protest of his administrative detention without charge or trial.

Adnan, 37, was arrested on 8 July 2014 as part of the mass arrests against Palestinians in the West Bank and Jerusalem immediately prior to and during the Israeli aggression against Gaza, and had been held in administrative detention – without charge or trial -since that time. A father of six, Adnan is a baker and a political activist in his hometown of Arraba, near Jenin. He rose to national and international prominence in 2012, when he was similarly imprisoned without charge or trial under administrative detention and conducted a 66-day hunger strike that, like his 2015 strike, ensured his freedom, sparked numerous other hunger strikes among Palestinian political prisoners, and reinvigorated the movement to support and free Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails.

He began his most recent strike on 6 May, following a renewed administrative detention order against him; in January, he had launched a one-week hunger strike warning that any additional renewals of his detention without charge or trial would spark an open-ended strike. During his strike, Adnan refrained from all nourishment except water and salt and was imprisoned, shackled to his bed, in Assaf Harofeh hospital.