Hamas co-founder Hassan Yousef released after 2.5 years in Israeli detention
Yousef, 71, was held without charge since shortly after October 7, 2023, and was taken to a hospital in Ramallah following his release
Hassan Yousef, a co-founder of Hamas in the West Bank, was released from Israeli custody Thursday without charge after two and a half years of administrative detention. His son Owais Yousef confirmed that his 71-year-old father was freed near the southern West Bank city of Hebron and taken to a hospital in Ramallah, where he resides.
Following his release, Yousef was seen in a hospital bed with one arm in a sling as relatives came to greet him. "I can't sleep because of the pain," he told a well-wisher over the phone.
It is unclear how he was injured.
Yousef helped establish Hamas in the 1980s alongside Sheikh Ahmad Yassine and other Palestinian members of the Muslim Brotherhood. He was arrested on October 19, 2023, at his home near Ramallah, as part of a wave of arrests of Hamas operatives following the October 7 attacks. He had previously been released in July 2020 after 16 months in administrative detention.
Israel has increased its use of administrative detention against Palestinians since the war began, a system that allows authorities to detain individuals for renewable six-month periods without charge. Israel says the system allows it to hold suspects while gathering evidence, though rights groups have long condemned it as open to abuse.
Yousef is estranged from his eldest son, Mosab Hassan Yousef, who spied for Israel's Shin Bet security agency for a decade before relocating to the United States, where he wrote the book "Son of Hamas."