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Itongadol.-Cleared for publication: The journalist Majd Kayyal, the editor of the website Adalah – The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel- was arrested on Saturday for contacting a foreign Hezbollah agent, Shin Bet announced on Thursday.
Kayyal is suspected of traveling to Lebanon for a conference commemorating 40-years of the Lebanese newspaper As-Saphir, where he came in contact with Hezbollah agents.
Adalah lawyers met yesterday with Kayyal in the Shin Bet Prison in Kishon, for the first time since his arrest.
Kayyal told his lawyers that that the investigation is focusing on his visit to Lebanon and explained that his visit was part of his job as a journalist.
Kayyal claims he is being held in a cell 24 hours a day, without any daylight, a bed or a lamp, and that he had lost his sense of time. He claims he was intensively interrogated and questioned about his private life.
Kayyal\’s lawyers are planning to submit a request to the court to reconsider his remand during a hearing set for next Tuesday.
The Adalah center accused the police of misconduct and said that "the steps taken against Kayyal are very serious, especially preventing him from meeting with lawyers and having a gag order on his arrest."
According to his lawyers, there was no justification for not allowing him to meet with his lawyers immediately after his arrest or having a gag order on the case. They added that Kayyal\’s visit to Beirut was published by him on his personal Facebook page and many other sites before he returned to Israel, implying he has nothing to hide.