An advocacy group and his son said that the oldest Palestinian prisoner in an Israeli jail was freed on Monday after serving a 17-year sentence for arms smuggling.
A representative for the Palestinian Prisoner’s Club reported that Fuad Shubaki, 83, had been released from Ashkelon jail and was “on his way to Ramallah” in the occupied West Bank, which was corroborated by Shubaki’s son Hazem.
In 2002, at the height of the second intifada, Palestinian security forces detained Shubaki, a prominent member of Fatah, the political party of Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas.
He was charged with trying to transport weapons into the coastal territory of Gaza aboard the ship Karine A, which Israel intercepted in the Red Sea.
According to the Israeli military, the ship was transporting 50 tonnes of weapons from Iran and the Hezbollah organisation with headquarters in Lebanon, including short-range Katyusha rockets, anti-tank missiles, and explosives.
