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Tel Aviv (dpa) - Israel's Foreign Press Association (FPA) protested Monday the arrest of Walid al-Omary, Jerusalem bureau chief of al-Jazeera, over alleged violations of censorship.
"All the al-Jazeera broadcasts, as well as other public broadcasts can be freely monitored and if the authorities have any suspicion of the law being broken, it can be checked without the repeated harassment of a correspondent," a FPA statement said.
Al-Omari was first taken into custody on Sunday along with the Israel crew of the Qatar-based broadcaster, for a real-time broadcast of a missile attack by the Lebanese Hezbollah movement on the Israeli port city of Haifa.
He was arrested again on Monday.
"Al-Jazeera does not appear to have broadcast information significantly different from that carried by Israeli media. Mr. Omary is well aware of the censorship restrictions imposed in Israel, particularly at a time such as this," the FPA statement said.
Copyright 2006 dpa Deutsche Presse-Agentur GmbH
