Israel arrests correspondent for Iran state media: police

Al-Alam news channel identified the journalist as Bassam al-Safadi.Police said he was "suspected of diffusion (of information) supporting a terrorist organisation and incitement to violence and terrorism", without elaborating. A court in Nazareth in northern Israel extended his detention until Sunday, police said.Al-Alam said in a statement that he was arrested "for no reason" in Masada, a village dominated by the Druze minority.His computer, camera and mobile phone were confiscated, the statement added.He is being held in Tzalmon prison in northern Israel, the police said, calling him a 43-year-old Arab Israeli. Many Golan Druze, however, consider themselves Syrians.Fares Sarafandi who works for Al-Alam in the occupied Palestinian territories told AFP that Safadi was their correspondent in the Golan Heights.Iran is an ally of Syria, which is technically at war with Israel, and a sworn enemy of the Jewish state.Hussein Mortada, head of Al-Alam's office in Syria, said the arrest was part of a "systematic campaign" by Israel against the media.Israel seized 1,200 square kilometres (460 square miles) of the Golan Heights from Syria in the 1967 Six-Day War and later annexed it in a move never recognised by the international community.