Nael Barghouti, older Palestinian detainee in Israel, released after 45 years in prison – Liberation
Nael Barghouti is free. The 68 -year -old man was the dean of the Palestinian prisoners held by Israel. After 45 years spent behind bars, Nael Barghouti was released this Thursday, February 27, thanks to the seventh exchange of hostages and prisoners as part of the fragile Truce in the Gaza Strip.
According to the Palestinian prisoners' club, an NGO defense of Palestinian prisoners, Nael Barghouti spent 34 consecutive years in prison. He arrived in Egypt This Thursday, after having been expelled from the Palestinian territories to its release. Barghouti appears on the list of 230 Palestinians condemned by the Hebrew State to exile. These prisoners, sentenced to life for attacks or attacks that caused the death of Israelis, are systematically banished from the territory.
Born on October 23, 1957 in the city of Kobar, north of Ramallah, Nael Barghouti was arrested for the first time in 1978. He was then sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of an Israeli officer and attacks against Israeli sites. At the time, he was a member of Fatah, the party of the current Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, based in Ramallah, in the West Bank, and Rival of the Islamist Movement Hamasin Gaza, founded in 1987.
After a first release, in exchange for the liberation of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, Nael Barghouti had been under house arrest in his hometown of Kobar, in the West Bank, territory occupied by Israel since 1967. But he had been incarcerated in 2014 and his sentence of perpetuity. During his detention, Barghouti left the Fatah to join Hamas. According to the Palestinian Commission for the Palestinian detainees and ex-discounts, it was submitted to « Unprecedented acts of mistreatment, isolation, deprivation, torture and attacks ».
The exchange of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners, which took place this Thursday at dawn, was the last of the first phase of the truce between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, entered into force on January 19 after fifteen months of war.
The Israeli prison administration has now confirmed that 643 Palestinian detainees had been released from several prisons in the country in the words of the truce agreement, after Hamas' restitution by four hostage bodies removed during the unprecedented attack on the Islamist movement on October 7 in Israel. The first phase of the truce allowed the return to Israel of 33 hostages, including eight deceased, and the release, according to Hamas, of some 1,700 Palestinians, out of a planned total of 1,900.
