OCCUPIED JERUSALEM —
All six Palestinian prisoners who
escaped an Israeli high-security jail through
a tunnel dug under a sink are back in custody after the occupation forces said
Sunday it had
recaptured the last two.
اضافة اعلان
The inmates, who were being
held for attacks against Israel, became heroes among many Palestinians when
reports emerged they had burrowed out using tools as basic as a spoon.
The full weight of Israel's
security apparatus was deployed to catch them, including aerial drones, road
checkpoints, and an army mission to Jenin in the occupied West Bank where many
of the men grew up.
The huge manhunt lasted
almost a fortnight, with the first four fugitives recaptured last week.
The Israel occupation
forces said Sunday the remaining two had
surrendered "after being
surrounded by security forces" that had acted with precision on accurate
intelligence.
The men, 35-year-old Ayham
Kamamji and 26-year-old Munadel Infeiat are both members of Islamic Jihad, an
armed Palestinian Islamist movement.
Islamic Jihad hailed its
"heroes" following the re-arrests, vowing the Palestinian people
"will not surrender" in response to Israeli "criminality and
aggression".
The pair were arrested in a
joint army operation with counterterrorism forces in Jenin and were
"currently being interrogated,’ the occupation forces’ statement said.
Two other men who had
allegedly helped the fugitives were also detained, it added.
“Major mishap”
Taleb Abo Jaafar, who owns
the Jenin house in which the two fugitives were found, said he had been
surprised to discover his home cordoned off in the middle of the night.
"There was shooting
around the house. I went out to see what happened, I opened the door and looked
at the street, the forces were outside and they told me to go back
inside," he told AFP.
In a call Sunday with
Israeli security chiefs, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett branded the escape
"a major mishap.”
"But you mobilized
with joint forces until the mission was completed," he added, vowing in a
separate statement that the security establishment would "correct what
needs to be corrected".
All six fugitives were
members of Palestinian militant groups who were convicted by Israeli courts of
plotting or carrying out attacks against Israelis.
Kamamji, originally from
Kafr Dan near Jenin, was arrested in 2006 and jailed for life for the kidnap
and murder of a young Israeli settler, Eliahu Asheri.
Islamic Jihad said Kamamji
suffered abdominal and intestinal illness in jail and was subject to
"medical negligence" by prison authorities.
Infeiat, arrested last
year, had been jailed multiple times previously for his role in the armed group
and was awaiting sentencing at the time of the escape.
Hiding in lorry park
The other four men
recaptured last week included Mahmud Abdullah Ardah, the alleged mastermind of
the escape, and Zakaria Zubeidi, who headed the armed wing of the Fatah
movement of Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas.
Zubeidi was found hiding in
a lorry park just outside Nazareth, along with one of the other men, Mohammad
Ardah, who was sentenced to life in prison in 2002 for his role in Islamic
Jihad's armed wing.
The remand of the four was
extended at Nazareth's magistrates' court to September 29 in a Sunday hearing,
police said.
Spoon of freedom
Questions remain over how
jailbreak could have happened, and a formal inquiry has been announced.
A lawyer for Yaqub Qadri,
the sixth escapee, told Palestinian television that the inmates had not planned
to escape when they did on September 6.
She said they rushed ahead
with the plan on that day because they feared guards had become suspicious and
noticed changes in their cell.
The break-out had been
planned for months, Ardah's lawyer told AFP, saying that "Mahmud told me
he started digging in December.”
Ardah told him he used
spoons, plates, and even the handle of a kettle to dig the tunnel from his jail
cell.
Spoons have since become a
symbol of Palestinian resistance, with protesters both inside and outside the
Palestinian territories carrying them at demonstrations.
They have inspired
political artwork as far away as Kuwait, where artist Maitham Abdal has sculpted
a giant hand clasping what he labeled the "spoon of freedom.”
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