The son of a Hamas co-founder says Israeli authorities released his father in the occupied West Bank on Thursday after holding him for more than two years without trial.
According to Owais Yousef, his 71-year-old father, Hassan Yousef, was freed near the southern West Bank city of Hebron and taken to a hospital in Ramallah, where he lives.
Yousef is a prominent Hamas leader in the West Bank and helped establish the group in the 1980s alongside Sheikh Ahmad Yassine and other Palestinian members of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Yousef had been held under Israeli administrative detention since October 2023, shortly after the Hamas attack on Israel that triggered the Gaza war.
Israel has expanded its use of administrative detention against Palestinians during the conflict. The system allows authorities to keep individuals in custody for renewable six-month periods without filing charges.
