Region | Palestinian Territories
Longest serving prisoner to be freed from Israeli jail
The longest-serving Palestinian prisoner in Israel was on Monday included in an official list of 199 people due to be released next week in a declared bid to bolster President Mahmoud Abbas.
- Reuters
- Published: 23:21 August 18, 2008
Occupied Jerusalem: The longest-serving Palestinian prisoner in Israel was on Monday included in an official list of 199 people due to be released next week in a declared bid to bolster President Mahmoud Abbas.
Saeed Al Atabeh, 57, of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), was arrested in 1977 and sentenced to life imprisonment after being convicted of involvement in bombings that killed an Israeli woman and wounded dozens of people.
He and 198 other Palestinians are due to go free on August 25. Their release will coincide with a visit by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who Israeli and Palestinian officials said would try to spur progress towards a peace deal.
A release list published by the Israel Prisons Service also included Mohammad Abu Ali, 52, who was jailed for life in 1980 for killing a leader of Jewish settlers near Hebron, in the occupied West Bank.
Abu Ali received a second life term for the jailhouse killing of a Palestinian suspected of collaborating with Israel.
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