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Israel to release 429 Palestinians on Monday: prison
spokesman
AFP, December
2, 2007
JERUSALEM, Dec
2, 2007 (AFP) - Israel is to release 429 Palestinian
prisoners on Monday, a spokesman for the Israeli prison
service said late Sunday after a delay in the operation.
"We are going
to release 429 Palestinian prisoners, most of them members
of (president Mahmud Abbas's party) Fatah, as well as some
from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and
the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine,"
Lieutenant Colonel Yan Domnitz told AFP.
He said 408 of
the Palestinians would go free in three batches headed by
buses for the West Bank through Beitunya, near the city of
Ramallah, and a group of 21 others through the Erez crossing
with the Gaza Strip.
The
Palestinians are to released from Ketziot jail in the Negev
desert of southern Israel, another prison service spokesman
told AFP earlier.
They were
slated to have been freed on Sunday but the operation was
delayed without a reason being given. Israel, which
currently has more than 11,000 Palestinian prisoners, freed
86 in early October and more than 250 in July.
The Israeli
cabinet approved the latest releases as a goodwill gesture
to Abbas who took part last week in a US-hosted Middle East
peace conference. None of those being freed has been
implicated in attacks that killed Israelis. |
