Behind Bars and Beaten: The Shocking Truth About Marwan Barghouti’s Prison Ordeal

Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti was subjected to a “severe attack” by Israeli prison authorities in September, according to non-governmental organizations that follow the issues of prisoners in Israeli prisons.

The Prisoners’ Affairs Authority and the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club said in a joint statement that prison units “brutally attacked Barghouti in solitary confinement on September 9, using various tools of torture and beating.”

The incident took place in Megiddo prison in northern Israel.

The two organizations received this information from a Palestinian Authority lawyer, who was able to visit Barghouti on Sunday, after a three-month hiatus that prevented him from visiting, according to what the Prisoners’ Club told Agence France-Presse.

The attack that Barghouti suffered caused “injuries to his body, ribs and limbs, bleeding from his right ear, injury to his right arm and pain to his back,” the statement said.

Barghouti is a member of the central committee of the Fatah movement led by President Mahmoud Abbas when an agreement was reached between Israel and Hamas for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.

Al-Barghouti has been detained since 2002 and continued until 2005 on charges of “murder” during the second Palestinian intifada that began against Israel in 2000. He was sentenced in June 2004 to five life sentences.

Since fighting in the Gaza Strip began on October 7, al-Barghouti has been held in solitary confinement, and organizations that monitor Palestinian prisoner affairs say he has been attacked on two separate occasions since that date.

The Prisoners Affairs Authority considers that Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons have been exposed to attack, “among them symbols and leaders of the prisoner movement, there is only one explanation”, which is that Israel has “made a clear decision to attempt to kill”. them.”

Israel holds more than nine thousand Palestinians in its prisons, including about five thousand who were arrested after the October 7 attack, in addition to an unknown number arrested from the Gaza Strip.

The popular campaign to free Barghouti confirmed that he had been abused and in a statement called on “international agencies and organizations to fulfill their responsibilities under international law to protect Barghouti and the male and female prisoners.”