Prisoner list includes planners of mass atrocities
Public given 48 hours to appeal prisoners' release to High Court; Park Hotel attack planner Nasser Yataima among those set to be freed.
By YAAKOV LAPPIN, JPOST.COM STAFFMasked Hamas terrorists 311 (R)(photo credit: Mohammed Salem / Reuters)
A list of 477 Palestinian prisoners who will soon be free was published on Sunday by the Israel Prisons Service ahead of the first stage of an exchange deal that will see captive IDF soldier Gilad Schalit returned to Israel.The list includes Walid Anajas, who was convicted for his involvement in the bombing of the Moment Cafe in Jerusalem in 2002.RELATED:Sbarro terror victims petition High Court on Schalit deal Timeline of the proposed prisoner exchange Twelve civilians were murdered and 54 wounded in the attack.Another soon-to-be released prisoner is Abd al-Aziz Salaha, who in 2001 took part in the murder of two IDF soldiers who mistakenly drove into Ramallah.
Salaha was caught on camera holding out hands covered in blood after beating one of the soldiers to death. He held his hands out of a Ramallah police station where the soldiers were killed, to a frenzied Palestinian crowd that gathered outside.Also on the list is Nasser Yataima, convicted of planning the 2002 Passover Seder suicide-bomb attack on the Park Hotel in Netanya, in which 30 civilians were killed and 140 were wounded.Musab Hashlemon, of Hebron, who was sentenced to 17 life sentences for dispatching two suicide bombers to Beersheba, will be released.
Sixteen civilians were murdered when the bombers detonated themselves on two buses in central Beersheba in 2004.Hashlemon was released in the previous prisoner exchange deal for Elhanan Tenenbaum, when Hashlemon was a minor Hamas operative.He will be deported to Gaza.Chris al-Bandak, the only known Christian member of the Fatah Tanzim terror group, is also included. He was convicted of several shooting attacks which claimed the lives of two Israelis and seriously wounded a third in 2002.Ibrahim Jundiya, sentenced to 12 life sentences for dispatching a suicide bomber to a Jerusalem bus in 2002, will also be deported to Gaza. Eleven bus passengers were murdered in the bombing which occurred in Jerusalem’s Kiryat Menahem neighborhood.Fadi Muhammad al-Jabaa, sentenced to 18 life sentences for plotting the suicide bombing of a Haifa bus in 2003, in which 17 passengers were murdered, will be released and deported to Gaza. The list also includes Maedh Abu Sharakh, also convicted of plotting the Haifa bus bombing.Mazen Muhammad Faqha, who plotted the 2002 suicide bus bombing near Safed, in which nine passengers were murdered and 40 wounded, will also be released and deported to Gaza.Tamimi Ahlam, the Palestinian female Hamas terrorist convicted of aiding and abetting the suicide bomber who murdered 15 civilians and wounded 140 in the 2001 Sbarro pizzeria bombing in the capital will be deported to her native Jordan.Hisham Ibrahim Hijaz, a Hamas member from Ramallah arrested in 2003, was sentenced to 10 life sentences for setting up a terrorist cell and using it to carry out a shooting attack near the West Bank settlement of Shilo. One Israeli was killed and two were wounded in the attack. Hijaz will be deported out of the area upon release.Amir Jabar Sharif Sawalma, of Nablus, arrested in 2003, was sentenced to six life sentences for an array of lethal terrorist acts. Sawalma carried out a shooting attack at an IDF checkpoint at Mount Gerizim in the West Bank, killing two IDF soldiers and injuring three.He also dispatched two suicide bombers and prepared their explosives belts at IDF positions, killing an additional two soldiers and injuring eight. Sawalma also sent a third suicide bomber to a civilian target. The bomber was stopped by a security guard, who was killed in the attack.Ahmed Mustafa al-Najar, of Ramallah, is a Hamas terrorist convicted of murdering six Israelis by acting as a lookout in a terror cell that carried out shooting attacks.Jabril Ismail, a Hamas terrorist operative, assembled a bomb and hid it in a radio. He placed the device at the entrance to an apartment building in Modi’in. A landlord was badly wounded in his hand and face in the attack.Ismail also plotted a suicide bombing at a gas station in the central Israeli town of Neveh Yamin in 2001. Two teenagers were murdered and four were wounded in the attack. Ismail, sentenced to six life sentences, will be deported to either Gaza or abroad.Ismail Musa Bahit, of Gaza, is a member of the Popular Resistance Committee who was arrested in 1993. He received 12 life sentences for murdering six Palestinians he suspected of cooperating with Israel and one Jewish vegetable seller in a terror attack.He tried to kill an additional four Palestinians he suspected of working with Israel. He will be released back to his home in Gaza.Click for full JPost coverage of Gilad Schalit
