Palestinian leader Marwan Barhouti who is still a prison guard, the family said
Prominent Palestinian prisoner Marwan Barghouti was beaten unconscious by Israeli prison guards on September 14, his family said.
This 66-year-old man – serving life for the murder of five Israelis – is said to have been attacked by eight guards during the transfer between Ganot and Megiddo prisons.
The Israeli prison service told the BBC: “These are false claims (hoaxes). The Israeli prison service operates according to the law, while ensuring the safety and health of all prisoners”.
Barghouti’s son, Arabi, told the BBC the family had received evidence from five detainees who were released this week who gave Barghouti’s account of the attack. He said the family was “shocked”.
It is alleged that Barghouti was manhandled by guards, put down, kicked and beaten.
“They focus on the head area, they focus on the chest area and they go into the legs,” she said. “He was unconscious for hours, passed out, and couldn’t walk.”
Arab said he believed that this attack happened as his father was being transferred between two prisons, in the south and north of Israel, because there were no surveillance cameras.
Barghouti is serving five life sentences and 40 years after being convicted by an Israeli court in 2004 of planning an attack in which five civilians were killed.
Ambombo told the family of the attack as part of Monday’s kidnapping and prisoner exchange between Israel and Hamas, Arab said.
Barghouti’s name was at the top of a list of seven high-profile prisoners whose release Hamas had sought in return for the 20 living Israeli hostages the group was holding in Gaza – but Israel refused to include him.
He is seen by many as that one man who can connect with the Palestinians – and the various Palestinian political parties – across Gaza and the West Bank.
Opinion polls have consistently shown that he is the most popular Palestinian leader, and that the Palestinians will vote for him in the presidential election in Petrosine (PA) for President Mahmoud Abbas or the leaders of Hamas.
Barghouti remains a senior figure in the Fatah-ruled PA, which controls parts of the occupied West Bank outside of Israeli control. He has been held in solitary confinement since October 2023.
The Minister of National Security of far Israel, who is in charge of the prison service, denied Sarghouti, but said that he was “famous” in Barghouti prison.
In August, a video surfaced showing Ben Gvir tying a barhouti to his cell.
The 13-Second video clip was the first to be seen publicly in years. He appeared aged and troubled.
In the episode, Ben Gvir tells him: “You will not succeed. The one who meets with the people of Israel, the one who will kill our children, we will erase him and our women, we will erase him.
As barhouti tries to prove it to him, Ben Gvir adds: “You need to know this, in all history.”
The PA condemned the video. Its president Hussein Al-Sheikh described it as “a good example of psychological, moral and physical terrorism.”
