Salah Hamouri at a demonstration in Paris on May 6, 2025. GEOFFROY VAN DER HASSELT/AFP
Israel attempted to remove Salah Hamouri by expelling him to France in 2022, but its actions did not end there. After filing a complaint against persons unknown, with an application to join as a plaintiff, for "torture and acts of barbarity" and "arbitrary detention" in spring 2024, the French-Palestinian activist lodged a new complaint on Friday, November 7, for "deportation," "persecution" and "segregation." The first complaint, which led to a judicial investigation, covered the various periods of administrative detention experienced by Hamouri in Israel in 2004, 2017-2018 and 2022. The second complaint focuses on events following his last detention, specifically the revocation of his permanent residency permit for East Jerusalem in 2021 and his expulsion to France – his mother's country of birth – in 2022.
Born in 1985 in Jerusalem, Hamouri is a lawyer who worked with Addameer for Prisoner Support and Human Rights, a non-governmental organization. He lived his entire life in Jerusalem until his expulsion. He is married to a French citizen, who has been banned from entering Israel and the Palestinian territories since 2016. Arrested in 2001 for four months for participating in the Second Intifada, and then held in administrative detention for five months in 2004, the young Palestinian activist was accused in 2005 of planning the assassination of former chief rabbi Ovadia Yosef, spiritual leader of the ultra-Orthodox Shas movement.
