Sheikh Hassan Yousef is one of the most prominent Palestinian national and Islamic leaders and one of the founders of Hamas in the West Bank.
Born in 1955 in Al-Janiya, Ramallah and Al-Bireh Governorate, he graduated from the Faculty of Sharia and served as an imam and preacher in several mosques across the West Bank.
He was elected to the Palestinian Legislative Council representing Ramallah and Al-Bireh Governorate in the 2006 elections while imprisoned in an Israeli prison.
Israeli authorities repeatedly arrested him, and he has spent more than twenty-four years in prison, most of that time under administrative detention without formal charges or a fair trial.
His case is regarded as one of the clearest examples of the repeated targeting of elected Palestinian parliamentarians through administrative detention.
