Palestinian Authority prevents legal aid organisation from registering

 

According to the organisation, the Palestinian administration prohibited the establishment of a legal advocacy group that would have represented critics and opponents held in Palestinian jails. This action was denounced as the latest attempt by the administration to strangle civil society in the occupied West Bank.

Lawyers for Justice might lose access to its finances and be forced to shut if it isn't properly registered. Director Mohannad Karaje claimed the organisation was informed that, although being incorporated as a "civil corporation," it had broken the law by carrying out charity activities and accepting foreign funding.

Even though Lawyers for Justice has functioned as a civil corporation without incident for years, the Palestinian security forces refused to renew the registration, he said.

The New York-based watchdog Human Rights Watch criticised the procedural justification provided by the authority as a thinly veiled attack on an organisation that has defended torture victims and assisted in capturing evidence of the self-rule government's arbitrary detention of opponents in an effort to quell dissent.