PFLP leader Ahmad Sa'adat must go free

January 17, 2010

Fight Back News Service is circulating the following statement from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) on the kidnapping and imprisonment of Ahmad Sa'adat. We urge all of our readers to support the efforts to secure his immediate release.

On the eighth anniversary of the kidnapping of Comrade Sa'adat, PFLP condemns PA security cooperation with occupier

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine denounced the Palestinian Authority and its security forces for the kidnapping of its General Secretary, Comrade Ahmad Sa'adat on January 15, 2002, on the eighth anniversary of that plot to arrest Comrade Sa'adat at the behest of the occupation. On January 13, 2010, the PFLP called upon all to learn from the lessons and experiences of relying on U.S. and Israeli promises and warned against tampering with the Palestinian home front with schemes of security cooperaiton that only serve the occupation and its goals of liquidating proven and reliable national leadership.

The kidnapping of Comrade Sa'adat by PA security forces after luring him to a meeting under false pretenses in Ramallah followed upon occupation demands to imprison the leader after the liquidation by the PFLP of the symbol of extremism, the racist Zionist tourism minister Rehavam Ze'evi, in response to the assassination of PFLP General Secretary Abu Ali Mustafa.

The PFLP said at the time and reiterated today that the Palestinian Authority security forces arresting the General Secretary of a Palestinian political party and resistance faction, a leader of the Palestinian national movement and the Palestine Liberation Organization, set an unacceptable and dangerous precedent. The Front emphasized that this action was a departure from all norms of handling internal disputes and crossed all red lines in the internal Palestinian arena, in response to the demands and dictates of the occupation.

The Front statement said that this obedience to enemy forces accompanied by disregard for national unity and partnership, democracy, law and justice, has only led to further dictates from the occupation, undermining of the principles of national partnership and weakening national unity. It said that these actions serve the interest of the occupation and undermine the culture of resistance, aiding the occupation in its goal of liquidating the resistance, its cadres and leaders, and assisting its plans to steal Palestinian land, expel the Palestinian people, and undermine Palestinian rights.

The Front demanded that the Palestinian Authority must shoulder its responsibility – in addition to the U.S. and British responsibility at various levels – as a party to the “Jericho deal” that imprisoned Comrade Sa'adat and his comrades in Jericho prison under U.S. and British control, and led later to the occupation army's siege on the prison and abduction of Sa'adat and his comrades to Zionist prisons. The PFLP said that the Authority is responsible for this imprisonment, as well as the direct complicity of the U.S. and Britain in the occupation attack on the prison, which places them on the same level of the responsibility borne by the occupation for Comrade Sa'adat's imprisonment. It called for freedom for Comrade Sa'adat and all of the prisoners in the jails of the occupation, saluting their steadfastness.