Description

BETHLEHEM (Ma'an) -- Hamas authorities in Gaza last week detained six former security officials of their rivals, the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority, a rights group said Thursday.

Al-Mezan Center for Human Rights identified five of the detainees as Merwan Khalid Abu Tawahena, 35, Emad Jameel Abu Hassna, 32, Saeed Mohammed Salman Abu Rkab, 47, Ahmed Adel Mansi, 29, and Shareef Hamdan Khattab, 33.

All were detained between Oct. 6 and Oct. 16, and are being held at Hamas' internal security force headquarters in Deir al-Balah, al-Mezan said.

They were all previously employed as security agents of the PA before 2007, when Hamas split from the West Bank-based government.

Meanwhile, a Hamas-affiliated news site said on Thursday that four Hamas activists were detained in the northern West Bank by PA preventive security services.

The Palestine Information Center said university student Abdallah Bani Odeh and citizen Saad Al Amer were detained in Nablus, and Fouad Al-Shalabi and Rajai Ahmad Amouri in Tulkarem.

It also reported that Nablus magistrate's court extended the detention of Hamas-affiliated journalist Walid Khalid for a further 15 days.

The site said Khalid was refusing to eat or talk to protest his detention, and his family were holding a sit-in outside the PA's Junaid jail in Nablus.

Khalid, from Salfit in the northern West Bank, was detained by PA preventive security on Sept. 18.

Fatah and Hamas pledged to end political arrests in the May 2011 reconciliation agreement but the treaty has yet to be implemented.