Report: Marwan Barghouthi to be released 'within days'

[oberliner]

Jerusalem – Ma’an/Agencies – Israel is inching closer to the release of jailed Fatah leader Marwan Barghouthi, who is sentenced to five life terms for his activities with the Al-Aqsa Brigades, Fatah’s armed wing, during the second Intifada.

Khader Shuqeirat, one of Barghuthi’s lawyers, told Israel’s Channel Ten that “It is a matter of days until Marawan will be free.”

“No prisoner swap will be held without Marawan,” said Shuqeirat, “Marawan will be with his family, wife and children within days.”

http://www.maannews.net/en/index.php?opr=ShowDetails&Do=&ID=35806

[MNDemNY]

1. ..

[oberliner]

2. What do the two dots mean?

Can you elaborate?

[Idealism]

3. "No prisoner swap without Marawan"

How would Fatah force Hamas's hand in that? Last time I checked the only Israeli being held is in Gaza, not the West Bank.

[bemildred]

4. A Palestinian Nelson Mandela?

Wearing brown, prison-issue garb, the Palestinian on trial on murder charges in a Tel Aviv criminal court barely seemed to be paying attention as prosecutors ticked off his alleged crimes. But he was quick to respond whenever his accusers described him as a “michabel”, Hebrew for “terrorist”.

“The occupation is terrorism,” the defendant, Marwan Barghouthi, would shout — in Hebrew — and then go back to ignoring the proceedings in a court which he said had no jurisdiction to try him.

A main voice of a Palestinian uprising after peace talks, which he had supported, collapsed in 2000, Barghouthi was arrested in an Israeli army raid in 2002 in the occupied West Bank and put on trial a year later on charges of orchestrating attacks that killed four Israelis and a Greek monk. Described in the indictment as the commander of Fatah’s al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, he was convicted and given five life sentences.

Now, Barghouthi, 49, could be released by Israel to bolster Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah faction ahead of any prisoner swap with Hamas, which has been holding Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit since 2006.

http://blogs.reuters.com/axismundi/2009/02/16/a-palestinian-nelson-mandela/?rpc=401&

[Alamuti Lotus]

5. something like that

probably the only figure that can save Fat'h if he wanted (the baffoonish goon squad of Dahlan, Rjoub, Abbas, etc have of course all irrepairably discredited themselves as US/Israeli pawns). When not leading a faction of Kitaeb al-Aqsa (motivation for his kidnapping and show trial), he was commander of Tanzim-the force Arafat built to initially fight Hamas. Not sure where his chips are going to fall when he gets out.