Raed Salah
Raed SalahYonatan Sindel/Flash 90

The Haifa District Court on Friday released Sheikh Raed Salah, the leader of the northern branch of the outlawed Islamic Movement, to house arrest.

The Magistrates Court had decided to release Salah on Thursday, but the prosecution appealed. The appeal was rejected on Friday, and Salah was thus released.

The radical cleric will remain under house arrest with an electronic handcuff until the end of proceedings in the trial against him for offenses related to incitement.

Salah's Islamic Movement was outlawed in 2015 for fomenting unrest on the Temple Mount, the Holiest site in Judaism, and for sending groups to the site specifically to harass Jewish visitors.

He was arrested for incitement to terrorism and supporting an illegal terrorist organization following the July 14, 2017 terrorist attack on the Temple Mount in which three Druze Israeli policemen were shot dead.

At funerals of the terrorists in Umm Al-Fahm, he praised the murderous attack and called for a war on the Temple Mount.

Salah previously served a nine-month jail sentence after being convicted of encouraging violent attacks and inciting racism in a 2007 sermon.

The radical cleric has in the past labeled Israeli leaders “terrorists” and “enemies of Allah” in a speech to Muslims in Be’er Sheva, and was also jailed for five months in 2010 for spitting at an Israeli police officer.

(Arutz Sheva’s North American desk is keeping you updated until the start of Shabbat in New York. The time posted automatically on all Arutz Sheva articles, however, is Israeli time.)