‘Part of ear cut off’: Marwan Barghouti being abused 'just for fun' in Israeli dungeons, son reveals
"Your father was physically destroyed; they broke his teeth, kept beating him, cut off part of his ear, and broke his fingers just for fun."
The Israelis broke imprisoned Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouti’s teeth, ribs, and fingers, and cut off part of his ear “just for fun,” according to his son Qassam.
“I woke up this morning to a phone call from a released prisoner, who told me: your father was physically destroyed; they broke his teeth, kept beating him, cut off part of his ear, and broke his fingers just for fun,” Qassam wrote in a Facebook post on Friday.
He added: “What should I do? Who should I talk to? To whom should we turn? We are living with this nightmare daily... Oh God, have mercy. My father is now 66 years old. Oh God, where do we find the strength?”
In a later post on Facebook, Qassam wrote that attempts to contact the freed prisoner who had conveyed the information about his incarcerated father proved futile:
To clarify: We are still trying to reach the released prisoner who contacted me this morning, but we have not yet been able to. We have contacted all possible official and legal authorities to help us obtain any information, but we have not been able to do so either. I apologise for causing concern to many of my loved ones due to my emotional reaction to the call. I hope my father and all the prisoners are well; that is all that matters to us.
The Palestinian Prisoners’ Media Office raised the alarm, ascertaining that there is a danger to Barghouti’s life: “We warn of a real danger threatening the life of the imprisoned leader Marwan Barghouti amid systematic Israeli attacks and escalations targeting him and his family.”
Barghouti, a leader in Fatah, the largest faction in the Palestinian Authority (PA), consistently polls as the most popular leader among Palestinians. In the case of free elections in the Palestinian territories, he is widely tipped to emerge as the Palestinian president. In a May poll, Barghouti, garnered 50 percent of the votes, ahead of Hamas’s Khaled Mashal (35 percent) and Palestinian Authority’s Mahmoud Abbas (11 percent).
It is because of Barghouti’s popularity and his ability to unify the Palestinians that the Israelis have never included him in any prisoner exchange deals since he was incarcerated and sentenced to five life terms plus 40 years during the Second Intifada in 2002.
In the latest round of prisoner exchange between the Palestinians and the Israeli occupiers in October, intensive negotiations to include Barghouti among the prisoners to be freed went nowhere, as the Israelis put their foot down against his release.
In an interview with Time in October, Trump revealed that the case of Barghouti’s release was under consideration. When asked, “Do you think Israel should release him from prison?” Trump responded: “I am literally being confronted with that question about 15 minutes before you called. That was the question. That was my question of the day. So I’ll be making a decision.”
The decision, if it was in Trump’s hands at all, turned out to be another no.
Like other prominent Palestinian detainees in Israeli rape-and-torture dungeons, Barghouti has been subjected to severe beatings and other forms of abuse.
Psychological torture of Barghouti has even been filmed and propagated by Israeli National Security Minister Ben-Gvir himself. In a video released in August, Ben-Gvir openly threatened Barghouti. “Whoever messes with the people of Israel, whoever murders our children, whoever murders our women, we will obliterate them,” Ben-Gvir tells Barghouti in the video. “You will not defeat us.”
Barghouti’s family had a hard time recognising him in the video because of the barbaric treatment to which he had been subjected.
“The latest reports we heard about the great leader Marwan Barghouti is that they broke three of his ribs,” Mohammad al-Ardah, a released detainee, revealed in October.
“We do fear for my father’s life,” Arab Barghouti, another of Marwan’s sons, told Al Jazeera at the time. He added, “We know that [Ben-Gvir] showed him an electric chair on his phone and he told him, ‘This is your fate’ … If that’s not a threat to his life, I don’t know what is.”
Similar reports of abuse against Ahmad Sa’adat of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and Al-Qassam Brigades’ leader Abdullah Barghouti have consistently trickled out of Israeli dungeons.
In April, the Prisoners’ Media Office said that Israelis were trying to kill Abdullah inside their dungeons with rapidly escalating physical and psychological abuse, “The Prisoners’ Media Office confirms that prisoner leader Abdullah Al-Barghouti is facing a systematic liquidation attempt inside the Israeli Gilboa prison, where his health condition has reached a very critical stage that directly threatens his life.”
The statement went on to list meticulously all the ways Abdullah was being tortured.
Palestinian prisoner advocacy groups and political factions have consistently attempted to draw attention to the inhumane treatment that the detainees are enduring in the Israeli dungeons, where at least 94 Palestinians have been killed since October 7. However, their appeals have yielded nothing positive so far, as the detainees continue to be denied visits by family members and lawyers and continue to suffer deadly conditions.
A new campaign for the release of Barghouti, named Free Marwan and backed by more than 200 prominent figures, has now been gaining momentum.
The campaign statement reads:
We express our grave concern at the continuing imprisonment of Marwan Barghouti, his violent mistreatment and denial of legal rights whilst imprisoned. We call upon the United Nations and the Governments of the World to actively seek the release of Marwan Barghouti from Israeli prison.
It remains to be seen whether this latest effort makes any difference to the Israelis, who long ago stopped even pretending to show any respect for international laws or norms of civilised behaviour. Having live-streamed a Holocaust for nearly 26 months without facing any consequences, the Jewish state must feel indomitable, above the laws that govern all other states.
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Glaring silence from all the Euro-colonial devils that have been bleating "release the hostages" as their way of saying that the Palestinian political prisoners are not human and therefore not hostages.
They are evil. Why can no one stop them?💔