A Gaza journalist appealed a six-month prison term and fine Tuesday over her reporting on alleged corruption within the Hamas-run Health Ministry in a case that has drawn international condemnation of the coastal strip’s Islamic rulers.
Hajar Harb reported in 2016 that healthy people were paying doctors to help them circumvent the Israeli-Egyptian blockade by issuing medical referrals to hospitals abroad. She was sentenced and fined later that year and appeared before a Hamas-run court Tuesday, where the judge postponed her hearing on libel and slander charges until March.
“The harassment we face is not solely security. It is physical, psychological and is affecting our source of income,” she said outside the court complex. “No one knows where things are going in the coming sessions.”
On Monday, Amnesty International called Harb’s prosecution “an outrageous assault on media freedom.”
Journalists who gathered outside the court complex called for Harb’s acquittal.
Hamas denies the charges leveled in her 2016 report and they sentenced her in absentia while she was receiving cancer treatment in Jordan.