Photo Credit: Channel 2

The Jerusalem Magistrate Court convicted today the head of the Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement Sheikh Raed Salah for incitement to violence.  This followed a call in 2007 to stop in every way possible “the Israeli take-over of the place.”

In her verdict, Judge Hannah Miriam noted that “one cannot understand the words of Salah any other way than a call to violence.”  However, the court ruled that “there is no proof beyond a doubt that there exists a connection between the unruliness that occurred at the place and the speech of the northern branch leader, and therefore acquitted him of incitement to racism.”  The sentence of Sheikh Salah will be decided later.

According to the indictment, Sheikh Salah in 2007 came to Jerusalem with hundreds of supporters and gave a speech to thousands of people in the Wadi al-Joz neighborhood.  “Now we are in the area, the blessed, the pure, and the master of pure blessings, had it not been for the disturbances and the disruptions caused by the Israeli occupation that will be removed with Allah’s help, like others like it were in the past,” the Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement leader stated in his speech.

Sheikh Salah continued by stressing in his speech: “When we are here preparing to pray in the compound of the Al Aqsa Mosque, the Blessed will remove the haze of discrimination from the sky of holy Jerusalem with the blood of the innocent whose steps unraveled their blood and took the souls of Israeli occupation soldiers who occupy the blessed Al Aqsa Mosque.”