After staging an intermittent hunger strike for some nine months, hunger striking Palestinian prisoner Samer Issawi agreed to start eating again, pending the signing of a deal later in the day. The deal would see him released to his home in Jerusalem in eight months.
Update (April 23, 4:10 p.m.): Issawi has signed the deal and ended his hunger strike, Maan reports. He is expected to be released in late December of this year.
Palestinian hunger striking prisoner Samer Issawi has agreed to end his hunger strike, and will be released to his home Jerusalem in eight months’ time, Reuters reported late Monday night.
The details of the deal were not immediately clear, but Issawi has insisted all along that he would not agree to be exiled, like other released prisoners have. Read more background: here, here and here.
Updated:
Samer Issawi was released as part of the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange in October, 2011, having served 10 years of a 30-year sentence. He began his hunger strike nine months later, shortly after the IDF re-arrested him in the summer of 2012.
In February, the Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court sentenced him to eight months in prison for violating the terms of his release, with credit for time served. According to that conviction and sentencing, he was to be released on March 6. However, he still faced the re-sentencing hearings in military court.
Issawi announced this week that he would boycott the military court proceedings against him and that he refused to recognize the legitimacy of the courts.
Issawi’s lawyer, Jawad Boulous, told Haaretz that the agreement will see him serve a total of 18 months (from his arrest in July).
The full details of the deal were expected to be announced later Tuesday, Maan reported.
