An international campaign was launched on Monday to demand the release of Marwan Barghouti, the prominent Palestinian leader who has been imprisoned by Israel since 2002.
Barghouti, 66, a senior figure in President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah group, is serving five life sentences on charges related to the Second Intifada. His brother, Muqbel Barghouti, stated that the campaign includes simultaneous events in London, South Africa, France, Italy, Arab countries, and Barghouti’s hometown of Kobar in the occupied West Bank.
Events over the weekend featured demonstrations, art displays, and a mural painted on a football field in Kobar with the phrase “Free Marwan.” The campaign has notable support in France, where Barghouti holds honorary citizenship in over 50 municipalities, and involves cooperation with human rights institutions and Nobel Peace Prize winners.
Muqbel Barghouti called for accelerated efforts to release all Palestinian prisoners, citing that more than 90 have died in Israeli custody since October 2023 and warning of “difficult health and humanitarian conditions, torture, and killings.” According to prisoners’ rights groups, Marwan Barghouti was recently assaulted by Israeli soldiers, suffering multiple rib fractures.
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Widely viewed as a unifying figure in Palestinian politics, Barghouti was notably excluded from the list of prisoners released under the recent Gaza ceasefire agreement that began on October 10. That deal, which halted a two-year war, involves the exchange of Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners and envisions Gaza’s reconstruction under a new governing mechanism without Hamas.[]
Mi’raj News Agency (MINA)
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