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A Palestinian youth stands behind a wall sprayed with graffiti in Gaza City depicting 31-year-old Mohammed Allan. (AFP/Mohammed Abed)
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TULKAREM (Ma'an) --Palestinian prisoner Muhammad Allan was released late Wednesday from Israel prison custody,ending a year-long stint in administrative detention that he undertook a 66-day hunger strike to protest.
Head of the Palestinian Authority Prisoners' Affairs Committee, Issa Qaraqe, told Ma'an that Allan was taken to the Thabet Thabet hospital in Tulkarem for a medical checkup following his release.
Allan, a 31-year-old lawyer from the southern Nablus village of Einabus, was held without charge or trial for seven months before he began a hunger strike in June to protest what he described as "the absence of law in Israeli court."
He ended the hunger strike 66 days later after Israel's Supreme Court agreed to suspend his sentence. He had slipped into a coma twice, and there were fears he may have suffered brain damage.
Israel later reinstated his sentence when his health improved. Allan immediately began another hunger strike, but ended it two days later following consultations with his lawyer.
Israel's policy of administrative detention, which is almost exclusively used to detain Palestinians, has been strongly criticized by the international community as well as both Israeli and Palestinian rights activists.
According to the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, the majority of prisoners who go on hunger strike are Palestinians in administrative detention.
The Knesset, Israel's parliament, approved a law in July allowing the Israeli Prison Service to force feed hunger strikers if their condition becomes life-threatening, sparking outcry from rights groups and medical experts.
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