Israel resentences Palestinian released in Shalit swap deal

An Israeli court yesterday reinstated the sentence against previously released prisoner Nael Barghouthi, condemning him to life and 18 years in prison, the Palestinian Prisoners Club said.

Barghouthi, 59, has previously been held in Israeli jails and was released in 2011 as part of the Shalit prisoner exchange deal. He was later rearrested in June 2014. In total, he has served 36 years in Israeli jails.

Palestinian Committee of Prisoners’ Affairs head, Issa Qaraqe, said: “The ruling of the Israeli military court to reinstate the previous sentence of Barghouthi is revengeful, arbitrary and racist.”

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He stressed that re-arresting and retrying former prisoners is an “indication that the Israeli occupation arrest Palestinians without reasons.”

“The last arrests had no bases,” he said. “They are no more than an attempt to deal with the Palestinians on the basis of oppression, hatred and extremism.”

Israel has rearrested 63 freed prisoners and resinstated the sentences previously handed down to them, Qaraqe said.

Israeli forces first detained Barghouthi, who is from the village of Kobar in the central occupied West Bank district of Ramallah, in 1978 when he was 20 years old for alleged membership in an armed resistance group.