A television correspondent who reported that Yasser Arafat’s Fatah group claimed responsibility for the double suicide bombing in Tel Aviv on Sunday has been arrested by Palestinian Authority security forces, according to the Jerusalem Post.
Al-Jazeera reporter Seif al Din Shahin said his information came from a Fatah activist called Abu Kusai who claimed the group’s terrorist wing, Al Aqsa’s Martyrs’ Brigades, conducted the bombings that killed 22 people and wounded more than 100.
The Brigades published an official claim of responsibility on its website, which included names of the bombers.
Palestinian officials, however, were outraged by Shahin’s report Sunday night.
At 2 a.m., about 20 members of the Palestinian Authority’s General Intelligence raided the offices of the Qatari television station while Shahin was working. The 34-year-old reporter was taken to a detention center in Gaza City where he is undergoing questioning.
Although the bombings occurred in Tel Aviv, Arabic News described the victims, which included many foreigners, as “Israel settlers.”
Palestinian security officials said the correspondent was apprehended on direct instructions from Arafat’s headquarters in Ramallah, according to a report from Jerusalem by the Calgary Herald.
Arafat funds his Fatah group, the ruling party in the West Bank and Gaza, from foreign aid, including contributions from the European Union.
The officials accused Shahin of “inflicting damage to the interests and reputation of the Palestinian people and their struggle” by reporting a telephone conversation with a member of Al-Aqsa who claimed responsibility for the attack, the Post said.
Shahin said in a hurried telephone interview that he was inside a room where a General Intelligence officer made “a strange request, to provide the source of the phone call to Al-Jazeera,” according to the Herald.
“I believe the decision to arrest me is a political one,” he said. “I’m being treated well.”
However, lawyers representing human-rights organizations were barred from seeing the correspondent.
In a statement, the Foreign Press Association called for the immediate release of Shahin, “who, from all indications, was arrested for doing his job as a journalist.”
The Palestinian Center for Human Rights called the arrest “a serious breach of freedom of the press.”
Shahin’s colleagues said it was his first arrest, but noted that the Palestinian Authority had regularly harassed journalists working for al-Jazeera and other independent media in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the Jerusalem newspaper said.
The Post reported that a prominent Fatah official from Jerusalem, Hatem Abdel Kader, condemned Shahin’s arrest and called for his release.
