Palestinian prisoner released after 19 years in Israeli jails

A Palestinian prisoner has finally been released from captivity after spending 19 years in the Israeli regime’s jails.

Israeli authorities released Majdi Hussein al-Qubaisi on Thursday. He was arrested in November 2002 when his family’s house was stormed by Israeli forces in the village of Abwein, located north of the city of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank.

The occupying regime accused Qubaisi at the time of belonging to the Ezzedine al-Qassam brigade, the armed wing of the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas, and participating in attacks on Israeli settlers’ cars near Ramallah.

The prisoner was subjected to harsh interrogations for more than two months, during which he faced the most severe forms of torture and abuse.

Israel extends detention of Palestinian hunger-striking inmate despite deteriorating health condition

The Israeli regime extends the administrative detention of a Palestinian prisoner who has been on hunger strike for more than 100 days.

Before his arrest, Qubaisi was studying computer engineering at Birzeit University but the Israeli authorities prevented him from completing his education and denied his family visits for years.

The unjust sentence and the violations against Qubaisi did not affect his resolve as he embarked on studying and writing in prison, and decided to memorize the entire Holy Qur’an within nine months in 2008.

More than 7,000 Palestinians are reportedly held in Israeli jails. Hundreds have been incarcerated under the practice of administrative detention.

Some Palestinian prisoners have even been held in administrative detention for up to eleven years.

Last month, hundreds of Palestinians held in Israeli prisons went on a hunger strike in protest against an intensified Israeli crackdown on Palestinian detainees that took place following the escape of six inmates from a maximum-security Israeli jail on September 6.

Six Palestinian prisoners escape from Israeli prison, Hamas calls it ‘heroic’

The six cellmates, serving life sentences, reportedly fled through an underground tunnel from the Gilbao Prison in northern Israel, which they had managed to dig over the past few months.

The hunger strike, which began on October 13, was suspended nine days later after the Palestinian Islamic Jihad resistance movement declared “victory” over the Israel Prison Service.

On September 6, Zakaria Zubeidi, a former commander of the Palestinian resistance group al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade in Jenin, and five members of the Islamic Jihad group managed to tunnel their way out through their cell’s drainage system to escape from the maximum-security jail of Gilboa.

It was the biggest Palestinian escape from an Israeli jail since 1987, when six members of the Islamic Jihad broke out of a heavily-guarded jail in Gaza.

After the recent escape of the six inmates, Israel adopted collective punitive measures against the Palestinian prisoners. The six Palestinian prisoners were all recaptured nearly two weeks later.

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