Farouk Abdel-Muhti, a New York based Palestinian Human Rights Defender collapsed and died on Wednesday 21st July 2004 as he finished speaking at an event in Philadelphia, USA. Farouk was speaking at a panel discussion titled “Detentions and Torture: Building Resistance” at the Philadelphia Ethical Society. Farouk had been released on the 12th of April 2004 from 718 days in immigration detention, including over 250 days in solitary confinement. He had spoken in Philadelphia of his own experience and of the need to build a movement against detentions.

Farouk Abdel-Muhti was a 56-year-old, stateless, Palestinian human rights defender who had been living in the United States since 1975. He was one of the twelve human rights defenders featured in Front Line USA: Threats, Attacks, Arrests and Harassment of Human Rights Defenders [0], and spoke at the launch event in Washington DC on the 9th of June. He had been arrested on a deportation order on 26th April 2002. He was interrogated, beaten by law enforcement agents and prison guards, handcuffed and manacled and shackled, held for weeks in a steel cell for twenty-three hours a day, and denied medical care. Front Line is concerned that his detention and treatment was linked to his work to defend human rights.

Over the past thirty years, Farouk Abdel-Muhti was an important human rights activist and advocate on a variety of issues. He has been an influential advocate for the rights of Palestinians in the occupied territories and for Palestinian self-determination. In the months following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, he spoke and wrote tirelessly in defense of the human rights of Muslims in the USA.

Front Line Deputy Director Andrew Anderson expressed the organization’s “great sadness at the loss of a tireless and courageous human rights defender who brought great passion to his work on behalf of others no matter the cost to himself.” Speaking on his release from detention in April Farouk Abdel-Muhti said “We won a victory but still have to win the war for justice, equality and rights for both immigrants and all the people in the nation who are fighting for democratic rights and social justice”.