Abbas Cancels Prison Term for Police Officer who Criticized Him for Attending Peres Funeral

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has canceled the one-year prison term handed out to a Palestinian security forces spokesman who criticized Abbas’s decision to attend the funeral of Israel’s senior statesman, Shimon Peres. Osama Mansour had been sentenced to a year in jail after he posted his criticism on Facebook, asking Abbas to reconsider attending the funeral. The military court that tried Mansour stripped him of his rank and ordered the jail time, but Abbas issued a presidential decree ordering Mansour to be released from the security forces in lieu of the jail time. The action by Abbas follows a series of scathing critiques of his administration’s policies relative to press freedoms.