Israeli police said on Saturday that they had captured four of the six Palestinian fugitives who escaped from Gilboa, a maximum-security prison, this week, in a case seen as a humiliation for the country’s high-security reputation.
Two of the prisoners, Mahmoud al-Arida and Yaqoub Qadri, were captured Friday night on the southern edge of Nazareth, in northern Israel, five days after they had escaped through a hole in the floor of the shower cubicle in their cell.
A second pair, Zakaria Zubeidi and Mohammad al-Arida, Mahmoud’s brother, were seized on Saturday morning in a truck parking lot in Umm el-Ghanem, a village east of Nazareth.
Zubeidi was a leader during the second Palestinian uprising in the early 2000s. While he has been linked to attacks on Israelis, he was also well known for receiving, over the years, amnesty and taken college courses and was active in a West Bank theatre movement before he was re-arrested in 2019 on suspicions of involvement in attacks.
The other three recaptured inmates are members of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, an Islamist militant group, and have been serving life sentences for involvement in attacks on Israeli civilians, the Israeli police said.
footage published by Israeli news outlets showed the two prisoners who were captured Friday handcuffed inside police cars, wearing civilian clothes.
Israeli media reported that the pair had been arrested after a tip by Nazareth residents, who said they had asked for food.
More videos released by the police on Saturday morning showed two blindfolded men, said to be Zubeidi and Mohammad al-Arida, being led by officers to police cars.
The two other fugitives who are still free on Sunday morning are both members of Islamic Jihad, the authorities said.
One, Eham Kamamji, was serving a life sentence for kidnapping and killing an Israeli teenager, Eliyahu Asheri, while the other, Munadil Nafayat, had been imprisoned without charge since 2019, according to Israeli police.
After the first arrest on Friday night, rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip, where Islamic Jihad has a stronghold. No injuries were reported, and it was not immediately clear if the launches were linked to the arrests.
The Israeli Public Prosecution charged the four recaptured prisoners with “planning to carry out a terrorist attack”, “belonging to a terrorist organization”, and escaping from prison.
Meanwhile, The Israeli Magistrate’s Court in Nazareth extended the detention of the four re-arrested Palestinian prisoners until the 19th of this month.
The arrests moved Israel closer to closing an embarrassing episode that exposed deep flaws in its prison system.
To many Palestinians, the 6 fugitives didn’t escape prison but claimed their freedom. The five days of freedom that the 4 fugitives experienced after defeating one of the highest security systems in the world with spoons were a symbolic victory for the Palestinian determination over Israeli occupation and blockade.
Al-Qassam Brigades spokesman, Abu Obeida, said in a speech Saturday, “No new exchange deal will take place without the four heroic prisoners who were re-arrested by the occupation.”
He promised that “If the heroes of the Freedom Tunnel have liberated themselves this time from underground, we promise them and our free prisoners that they will be liberated soon, God willing, from above the earth.”
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