This article was originally published by the Ma'an News Agency and is republished with permission.

Israeli forces raid the northern West Bank village of Jayyous, Mohammed Othman's hometown. (Maan Images)

On Saturday, Human Rights Watch stated that the Israeli military appeals court should end the administrative detention of Mohammed Othman, a Palestinian rights activist, and order his immediate release.

Othman was detained without charge by Israeli authorities and has been held more than two months on what appear to be politically motivated grounds.

On the basis of secret evidence that Othman and his lawyers were not allowed to see, a military court confirmed a military order consigning Othman to three months administrative detention. Othman has no criminal record and is not known to have ever advocated or participated in violence. His detention period, which may be renewed indefinitely, ends on 22 December.

"The only reasonable conclusion is that Othman is being punished for his peaceful advocacy," said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at HRW, in a statement. "The authorities interrogated him for months, then ordered him held some more, but they won't say why they are holding him and haven't accused him of any crime."

Israeli authorities detained Othman, an activist with the Stop the Wall campaign, a non-violent protest movement, on 22 September 2009, as he returned to the West Bank from a trip to Norway, where he spoke about the separation barrier that Israel has constructed in the occupied territories.

On 23 November, after Othman had been detained for 61 days "for the purpose of interrogation," Colonel Ron Weisel, an Israeli military commander of the West Bank, ordered him held for three months of administrative detention on the grounds that he was a threat to the "security of the area." The military court of administrative detainees, located in Israel's Ofer military base, near Ramallah in the West Bank, upheld the order on 25 November and counted the time that Othman had already been detained toward his detention.

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Othman's administrative detention order came one day after a military court ordered his release. He was originally detained under Israeli military orders authorizing "interrogative detention." According to his lawyers at Addameer, a Palestinian prisoners' rights organization, on 22 November the Military Court of Appeals ordered Othman's release on bail on the grounds that no progress had been made in his interrogation, no other evidence against him had been produced, and no charges had been laid against him.

However, the court also remanded Othman to detention for 24 hours and allowed the military prosecutor to issue an administrative detention order during that time. Weisel issued Othman's administrative detention the next day.

Israeli authorities have violated Othman's rights in detention, HRW charged. Mahmoud Hassan, a lawyer at Addameer who represents Othman, told the group that on 2 November Israeli authorities transferred Othman from the West Bank to a prison in Be'er Sheva, Israel without informing his family or his lawyers, and barred his lawyers from seeing him for 15 days.

"We learned about it only two days later from staff at the Ofer jail, where we tried to visit him," Hassan said. Othman was not allowed to attend two subsequent hearings on his case, Hassan added, during which time he was threatened with administrative detention. Israeli military orders authorize barring outside access to detainees "for the purposes of the interrogation."

International standards governing the treatment of all persons detained require prompt notification of a detainee's family, both after the person is detained and after a transfer to another place of detention. In addition, all detainees have the right to be visited by legal counsel, and any restriction on that right can only be in "exceptional circumstances, set out in law."

The administrative detention order saying that Othman "is a risk to the security of the area" cites military order 1591 from 2007. Under that order, the military commander of the West Bank may detain an individual for up to six months and renew the detention indefinitely. A military judge must review the commander's detention order, but the judge does so in a closed hearing, without witnesses, based on secret information that the detainee and his attorney cannot see. The defendant may appeal the military judge's decision to the military court of appeal for administrative detainees, which is also located in the Ofer military base.

According to Jamal Juma'a, a coordinator for the Stop the Wall campaign, an Israeli soldier had detained Othman at a checkpoint during the summer and threatened him because of his advocacy against the barrier. Juma'a said that before joining the campaign, Othman worked with the Ecumenical Accompaniment Program in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI), a World Council of Churches program to accompany Palestinian non-violent activists.

As of 9 November, Israel held more than 322 Palestinians in administrative detention, 132 of them for more than a year, according to the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem. According to the most recent available official statistics on the cases that actually go to trial in Israeli military courts, obtained by Yesh Din, another Israeli human rights organization, in 2006 Israeli military courts found defendants not guilty in only 23 (or 29 percent) of 9,123 trials.

Although international human rights law permits some limited use of administrative detention in emergency situations, the authorities are required to follow basic rules for detention, including a fair hearing at which the detainee can challenge the reasons for his or her detention.

As the occupying power in the West Bank, Israel is also bound by the rules governing occupation, which require it to use administrative detention only for imperative reasons of security, HRW pointed out.