Jaweed Al-Ghussein.
ONE PERSON CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE
Man of the people. The man who was abducted TWICE by the Palestinian Authority first from AbuDhabi then from his hospital bed in Cairo because he dared to speak out. The man who fought Arab Governments TO ENSURE Palestinian right to education. The man who helped hundreds of Palestinians by funding their education and finding employment for them. The price he paid for exposing corruption. Read what the UN determined on this case. Read what Amnesty and Egyptian Human rights had to say. Read the truth that the Arab world tried to suppress. Watch this space.
BIO
Jaweed was born in Gaza in 1930 where his family had lived for 800 years. He graduated from the American College in Cairo and began his career in the civil service in Kuwait where subsequently he started a construction company with Parsons a large American construction company. He moved his family to England in 1964 and at the same time started a construction a company CORDOBA in Abu Dhabi which was then under British rule. He built the first water pipeline from Al Ain to the Abu Dhabi city. He went on to build many of the major buildings in Abu Dhabi including the Sheik Zayed Cultural center.
A Philanthropist he personally funded the education of many Palestinians and secured employment for them both in Cordoba and other organizations. Hugely successful he devoted a large part of his time and funds to promoting peace and to ensuring the rights of all Palestinians. He was elected by the Palestine National Council (PNC) in 1984 to become Chairman of the Palestine National Fund as an independent and was also elected by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) to sit on the executive committee.
He fell out with Yasser Arafat in 1990 when he was the only leading PLO member to publicly oppose the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait. He accompanied Arafat to the White House in 1997 to sign the Oslo peace accord although he was one of three Palestinian leaders who expressed reservations that the accords were ‘front loaded to Israelis benefit’
He resigned in May 1996 calling for ‘accountability and transparency’ on Abu Dhabi TV. From that moment he was a marked man with a vicious media campaign orchestrated by the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the Abu Dhabi press and the Arab world alleging misappropriation of funds. The Abu Dhabi court procedures initially went to the PA favor but subsequently the Supreme Court in Abu Dhabi overturned the lower court orders. This resulted in his abduction from Abu Dhabi in April 2000 where accompanied by Abu Dhabi police he was taken to the VIP airport and flown to Arish Egypt and driven across the borders to Gaza where he was held hostage for several months.
A UN petition to the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention Determined that he was "being held with manifestly no legal justification’. He was subsequently taken to the Red Crescent hospital in Cairo in November and abducted from that hospital in January 2001.
International pressure from governments and human rights organizations AMENSTY, Red Cross PCCR (Palestinian Commission on Citizens Rights) Egyptian Human Rights (EHR) finally secured his release in August 2000 where he was taken by ambulance to Jerusalem and flown back to England for medical treatment.
In spite of threats to the family that necessitated Special Branch involvement the family continues to campaign Justice4Jaweed for a public apology, return of the family assets and compensation from Abu Dhabi and the Mahmoud Abbas the PA President.