The Governing Council of the Inter-Parliamentary Union,

Referring to the case of Ms. Mariam Saleh, a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council and Minister for Women's Affairs from March 2006 to March 2007, as outlined in the report of the Committee on the Human Rights of Parliamentarians (CL/183/12(b)-R.1), and to the resolution adopted at its 182nd session (April 2008),

Recalling the following:

• Ms. Mariam Saleh was arrested on 13 November 2007 and accused of: (i) membership in the Change and Reform bloc; (ii) membership in the Huda Society for Women; (iii) travelling abroad while Minister for Women's Affairs and meeting with Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh and Khaled Mashaal; and (iv) other acts which the prosecution classified as confidential and refused to disclose to the defence; however, the prosecution was unable to adduce any evidence to sustain the accusations and to charge her;

• On 17 December 2007, the Ofer military court ordered her release on payment of 7,000 shekels, but gave the prosecution the right to appeal, which it did; the next day Ms. Saleh was transferred to administrative detention; on 30 December her administrative detention was prolonged to six months at the request of the Israeli Intelligence Service, but this period was reduced by the court to three months; on 30 March 2008, the Appeal Court prolonged the administrative detention order until June 2008 without adducing any grounds,

Decides in the light of Ms. Saleh's release to close this case while deploring her arrest and detention for seven months, which it can only consider to have been arbitrary since the authorities had no valid charges or grounds for such detention as would have been admissible under the international human rights norms to which Israel, as a State party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, has subscribed.

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