ATHENS Senior Hamas leader Abdul Aziz al-Rantisi, who was released this weekend after spending 16 months of internment without charge or trial in a PA jail, said his punitive incarceration was ordered by Israel and the American Central Intelligence Agency (the CIA), according to a dispatch from Al-Qods. ``We all know that our authority (the PA) acts at the CIA's beck and call, hence they heeded CIA and Israeli orders to intern me as a reprisal for my ideas.'' Rantisi said during the sixteen months he spent in PA detention, he was not accused of any wrong doing.

And in response to a question on why the PA refused to set him free despite a ruling from the PA High Court to that effect, Rantisi said the PA was responsible to an authority that is higher than the high court, an allusion to Israel and the CIA. Rantisi was released on 21 July ostensibly to pay his respects to his mother who died on the same day.

Meanwhile, the Palestinian intelligence services have arrested four members of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) in the West Bank town of Nablus, Palestinian officials said Saturday. Three An-Najah University students and a tailor were arrested over the past two days, the officials said, without providing further details.