Tala Barghouti, the daughter of imprisoned Palestinian leader Abdullah Barghouti, serving the longest sentence in Zionist jails, 67 life sentences, reported revelations from his most recent lawyer visit: held in Gilboa prison, he has undergone ongoing, severe torture including multiple beatings with belts and iron batons.
The lawyer reported that Barghouti has bruises and open wounds all over his body; his fellow prisoners in the occupation jails help him to disinfect his wounds with dishwashing liquid, as they are denied sanitary products and he is actively being denied access to healthcare. He has lost dozens of kilograms of weight in the past 18 months, highlighting the severe medical neglect as well as the policy of starvation and malnutrition used as a weapon against the Palestinian prisoners.
“The lawyer left the visit with tears in her eyes, unable to convey the shock and anguish she witnessed. It encapsulated the daily torment of a prisoner whose dignity is being crushed without mercy,” Tala reported. He struggles to stand or to sleep due to his multiple injuries, including boils and bone fractures. He reported that occupation soldiers threatened Barghouti: “We will kill you as we killed Sinwar, all of you, one by one!” Multiple liberated prisoners have reported specific demands to curse the martyred Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and other major national figures under torture inside the Zionist jails.
This mirrors the overall and ongoing physical and psychological torture imposed upon the Palestinian prisoners. At least 65 Palestinian prisoners — including 40 from Gaza — have been martyred in the past 18 months, amid the imperialist-Zionist genocide in Gaza and the battle of Al-Aqsa Flood, of over 302 martyrs of the prisoners’ movement since 1967. This number is incomplete because the occupation has continued to refuse to release information about Palestinians abducted from Gaza and subjected to the most severe forms of torture, including beating, sexual assault and rape, sleep deprivation and starvation, inside the Sde Teiman and other prison camps of the occupation.
When Palestinian prisoners were liberated by the Palestinian resistance in the Toufan al-Ahrar exchange, the prisoners reported that not only were they beaten before their release, they were forced to wear sweatshirts, T-shirts and bracelets with racist and threatening messages (that they later publicly burned). They were shown videos and images of the devastation caused by the genocidal occupation forces in Gaza and told that everyone had been killed and no one remained; now, the occupation prison authority is reportedly hanging large pictures of their carnage and devastation in Gaza in the prisons in order to further torment the imprisoned Palestinians.
Abdullah Barghouti is a Jordanian-Palestinian citizen who was the leading engineer of the Izz el-Din al-Qassam Brigades of the Al-Aqsa Intifada, following the assassination of Yahya Ayyash.
His release, along with that of other imprisoned resistance leaders, like Ibrahim Hamed, Hassan Salameh, Abbas al-Sayyed, Ahmad Sa’adat and Marwan Barghouti, is one of the top priorities of the Palestinian resistance in a prisoner exchange. Inside the prisons, he wrote the novel/memoir, “Prince of the Shadow: Engineer on the Road” in 2012, presenting a fictionalized work based on his life story in prison, his resistance to the occupation, and his emergence within the resistance. He spent 10 continuous years in solitary confinement in the occupation prisons and has been repeatedly held in isolation; he has had less than 10 family visits during his 23 years of imprisonment.
On 20 July 2024, Barghouti was severely beaten in isolation in Shatta prison. He was then transferred from Shatta prison to an unknown and undisclosed location — later revealed as Gilboa prison — rather than receiving treatment for the severe assault.
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We urge all supporters of Palestine and the Palestinian cause to speak out actively and take action through demonstrations, mass actions and direct actions to confront the abuse of Palestinian prisoners, including Abdullah Barghouti and fellow Palestinian leaders. The imperialist powers, like the US, Canada, Britain, Germany, France and the Netherlands, that continue to arm, support and provide cover for the Zionist genocide in Gaza and throughout occupied Palestine, are fully implicated in these inhuman actions.
Indeed, repressive acts by imperialist powers — such as the US’ and Canada’s sanctions on Samidoun on 15 October — are meant to deprive the Palestinian prisoners’ movement of external support and solidarity, to hide the crimes being committed against them and prevent the perpetrators from being held accountable, and to limit, chill and suppress the growing movement for the liberation of Palestinian prisoners as part and parcel of the liberation of Palestine from the river to the sea. They especially seek to repress this movement as the Palestinian resistance has made clear that it insists upon and is committed to a proper prisoner exchange with dignity to release Palestinian leaders and all Palestinian prisoners in the Zionist jails. The repression in the imperial core is also meant as a mechanism of pressure against the Palestinian people, their prisoners and their Resistance.
Our entire movement must respond collectively to such repression by organizing even more loudly, clearly and effectively to shut down the imperialist-Zionist war machine, to support the Palestinian resistance and all forces of resistance in the region, and to ensure that the Palestinian prisoners are not now and will never be isolated from the Palestinian people, the Arab, Islamic and regional liberation causes, and the international movement for justice.
Freedom for all Palestinian prisoners in occupation jails! Victory to the Resistance!
From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!
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