RAMALLAH: A Palestinian security official sentenced to jail for criticising president Mahmud Abbas on Facebook for attending Shimon Peres’s funeral has been pardoned, a rights group said on Thursday. Abbas has granted the pardon to Lieutenant Colonel Osama Mansour, 49, following his online post criticising the Palestinian president, according to the Independent Commission for Human Rights. Abbas’s office had not commented. Mansour was public relations director at the Palestinian military liaison unit, which coordinates security with Israel. He was arrested 10 days ago and sentenced by a military court to a year in prison for disobeying orders against publicly expressing political opinions. But Amar Dweik, head of Palestinian group Independent Commission for Human Rights, said that Mansour was released on Wednesday and sent into retirement after Abbas issued a decree pardoning him.