Israeli police raided two Palestinian bookstores in occupied east Jerusalem on Sunday, confiscating books and arresting one of the owners and his nephew, according to their family members.
CCTV footage shared by the owners, four brothers from the Muna family, shows police officers putting books in trash bags at one of the branches of the Educational Bookshop, a decades-old respected institution with Arabic- and English-language branches.
“They did throw some books on the ground but the Arabic (language) store is where the material damage was,” store owner Iyad Muna told CNN.
Photos shared by Muna of the Arabic-language store show books, notebooks and writing materials scattered on the ground.
An Israeli court on Monday extended the detention of the two men – Mahmoud and Ahmed Muna – by 24 hours, to be followed by five days of house arrest. Police had originally asked for their detention to be extended for eight days while the investigation continued.
Representatives of diplomatic missions from the European Union, several EU member states, the United Kingdom and Brazil were present in court ahead of the hearing, according to a CNN journalist present.
Israeli police said in a statement Monday that two people were arrested on suspicion of “selling books containing incitement and support for terrorism.”
“The suspects who allegedly sold the books were taken into custody by police detectives,” the police spokesperson’s unit said.
Credit: cnn.com
