News - Middle East: Jailed Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouti, the most prominent Palestinian detainee in Israeli custody, has sustained rib fractures after being beaten by guards in Israeli prisons.

The Prisoners’ Media Office said Wednesday that Barghouti was beaten by Israeli prison guards while being transferred from Ramon Prison in southern part of Israeli occupied territories to Megiddo Prison in the north in mid-September.

The imprisoned leader lost consciousness and suffered a fracture in four ribs, it added.

The Commission for Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs and the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society earlier revealed that that Barghouti was also assaulted on September 9 last year while held in solitary confinement in Israel’s Megiddo Prison.

Barghouti back then suffered numerous injuries and bleeding in the right ear, which later turned into an infection as a result of medical negligence.

Barghouti, 66, a senior leader of President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah group, is one of the most prominent and popular figures in Palestinian politics.

He has been serving five life sentences in Israeli prisons since 2002 on charges related to the Second Intifada, which began in 2000.

 Palestinians are being held in “tragic conditions”, especially over the past two years of the Israeli genocidal war on the blockaded Palestinian territory.

Israeli regime has also intensified its mistreatment of Palestinian prisoners held in detention.

Prisoner rights groups and the United Nations in multiple reports  have shed light on the systematic abuse being committed against prisoners held in Israeli jails, including beatings, hunger, a halt in visitations and medical negligence.

Last week, Israel and Hamas resistance movement had agreed to the first phase of a plan to bring a ceasefire to Gaza, release all Israeli captives in exchange for Palestinian prisoners, and a gradual withdrawal of Israeli forces from the entire Gaza Strip.

Barghouti, the most popular and potentially unifying Palestinian leader was among the prisoners Israel was supposed to free in exchange for hostages held by Hamas under the new Gaza ceasefire deal.

Senior Hamas official Mousa Abu Marzouk recently said that the group insists on the release of Barghouti and other high-profile figures and that it was in discussions with mediators.

Israel has rejected freeing high-profile prisoners whose release Hamas has long sought.

some experts say Barghouti could be a powerful rallying figure for Palestinians. A large number of Palestinians view him as their own Nelson Mandela, the South African anti-apartheid activist who became his country’s first black president.

 Many Palestinians view the thousands held by Israel as political prisoners or freedom fighters resisting decades of Israeli military occupation.

Since October 2023, Israeli attacks have killed nearly 68,000 Palestinians in the  besieged region, most of them women and children, and rendered it largely uninhabitable.

Source: Press TV