Prisoner release list okayed

18 July, 2007

JERUSALEM: An Israeli ministerial committee yesterday approved the list of more than 250 Palestinian prisoners to be freed as a gesture to President Mahmoud Abbas, clearing the way for their release.

“The ministerial committee met this morning and approved the list,” said David Baker, an official in Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s office.

The names of the 256 prisoners — 11 minors and six women among them — were published by the prison authority as required by law to allow for any appeals to be filed against the release.

Barring any such appeals, which have to be filed within 48 hours of the publication of the names, the prisoners will be freed on Friday.

Israel pledged to release the prisoners as a gesture to Abbas, one of several steps taken to bolster the Palestinian president after security forces loyal to him were overrun in Gaza by fighters from Islamist Hamas a month ago.

The most high-profile name on the list is Abdelrahim Malluh, the deputy leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).

He was arrested in 2002 and sentenced two years later by an Israeli military tribunal to nine years in jail for belonging to a terrorist organisation.

The 60-year-old is one of the founders of the PFLP and had been in the Palestinian territories since 1994 following the Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestinians.

The vast majority of the prisoners due for release – 85% - belong to Abbas’s Fatah party.