Marwan Barghouti not to be released, Israeli minister says

Oct 11, 2011, 22:10 GMT

Jerusalem - Marwan Barghouti, the popular leader in Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah party, will not be freed as part of a prisoners' exchange between Israel and the Islamist Hamas movement ruling Gaza, an Israeli minister said Tuesday.

Barghouti, the former head of Fatah's West Bank branch and seen by many as the leader of the second Palestinian uprising against Israel in 2000 amid a deadlock in peace negotiations, is one of the most prominent Palestinians currently jailed in Israel.

He is serving five life sentences, after being held indirectly responsible by a Tel Aviv court for the killing of four Israelis and a Greek-Orthodox monk in shooting attacks by Fatah gunmen answering to him.

The minister, who spoke on condition of anonymity to Israeli media, said Ahmed Saadat, the head of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which assassinated a former Israeli tourism minister in a Jerusalem hotel in 2001, would also not be released.

Other prominent militants jailed in Israel are Ibrahim Hamed, the chief of Hamas' military operations in the West Bank held responsible for a series of suicide bombings in Israeli cities; and Hamas bombmaker Abdullah Barghouti, sentenced for the murder of 66 Israelis in a string of bomb attacks.