Release and protect Abdallah Motan!
The International Coalition for Filmmakers at Risk (ICFR) is deeply concerned for the well-being of young Palestinian documentary filmmaker Abdallah Motan. He has been arrested by the Israeli authorities on January 13 and sentenced to six months of "administrative detention" without trial or charges.
29-year-old Abdallah Motan is a film director, DOP and photographer from Ramallah, who has worked on documentary films in his own country as well as internationally. He has particularly strong ties with Italy, where he spent eighteen months in Naples for a journalistic internship. He is scheduled to return to Italy in February this year, to participate in the 21st edition of the AI Ard Film Festival organized by the Sardinia-Palestine Friendship Association.
In addition to his film work, Abdallah Motan has been involved in organising local film workshops, such as one in the Palestinian village Al-Zubaidat, situated in the Jordan Valley in the eastern West Bank. The aim of this training was to enable inspiring local young men and women to deal with the simple tools of documentation and editing, with the aim of documenting and expressing their day-to-day experiences.
This last Monday January 13, Motan was arrested by the Israeli authorities as he tried to travel to Jordan and further onwards to Dubai. He has been given so-called administrative detention, which means a six-month imprisonment (at least) without trial or concrete charges. He is currently held in the Gush Etzion incarceration facility near Hebron, a detention center recently in the news for massive outbreaks of food poisoning and torture of minors.
Abdallah Motan is among at least 43 film workers and journalists currently imprisoned by the Israeli authorities, in an attempt to silence coverage of the war on Gaza, according to the CPJ (Committee to Protect Journalists). The current surge of arrests in the West Bank is occurring during the recently implemented ceasefire, temporarily halting Israel's war on Gaza and facilitating the exchange of Palestinian and Israeli captives.
The ICFR joins Motan’s family in calling upon the Israeli authorities to release Abdallah Motan immediately and drop all the charges levelled against him. We encourage all our colleagues across the global film industry to join us in supporting our colleague Abdallah Motan, as well as our fellow film workers at severe risk in places of war and conflict around the world.
