Palestinian Leader Marwan Barghouti brutally assaulted in Israeli prisons
Occupied Palestine (Quds News Network)- Prominent Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouti and several fellow inmates were violently assaulted by Israeli prison guards at Megiddo Prison in early September, according to the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society (PPS).
He has been moved to three different detention facilities since October 2023, each time held in solitary confinement.
This incident marks the third time he has faced assault by Israeli guards within less than a year.
Previously, he was subjected to a brutal attack in December 2023 at Ofer Prison in the occupied West Bank, followed by another assault in March 2024 at Megiddo Prison.
The PPS reported in a statement the incident after a recent visit to Megiddo Prison, following a three-month ban on visits imposed by Israeli occupation authorities.
On September 9, 2024, Barghouti was assaulted in his solitary cell, resulting in serious injuries to his back, ribs, arms, and legs.
His recovery has been slow and difficult, as he copes with limited mobility, persistent chest and back pain, untreated infected wounds, and ear inflammation caused by internal bleeding, which has also gone without treatment, the statement noted. The prison authorities didn’t provide him with necessary medical care.
Who’s Marwan Barghouti?
Marwan Barghouti’s supporters call him the Palestinian Mandela. Like the South African leader who was imprisoned by the apartheid regime for 28 years, the Fatah politician has been in Israeli jail for more than two decades.
Barghouti was a prominent leader in the first and second Intifadas and was convicted by an Israeli court on five counts of murder in 2004, two years after he was jailed.
His imprisonment by Israel has been among the most high profile and his release has long been a key aim of several of the groups opposing Israel’s occupation of Palestine.
Israel accused Barghouti of having founded the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades in the early 2000s and indicted him on 26 charges of murder and attempted murder attributed to the Brigades.
He was sentenced by an Israeli court to five cumulative life sentences, plus 40 years for attempted murder and membership in a terrorist organisation.
