Ahmad Sa’adat under attack as Zionist regime targets prisoners’ movement leadership

Amid the ongoing assault on the leadership of the prisoners’ movement, in which prominent leaders of the Palestinian people and their resistance, especially those who are a high priority for release in a prisoner exchange, are being subjected to solitary confinement, beatings, starvation and torture, Ahmad Sa’adat, the imprisoned General Secretary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, is being held in isolation in Megiddo prison.

He was assaulted and brutally beaten during his last transfer to isolation in Megiddo and has faced dangerous health conditions and denial of medical care, imprisoned in a situation not fit for human life. In a statement, the PFLP said that the attack on Sa’adat “comes in the context of a systematic and dangerous escalation targeting the leaders of the prisoners’ movement, aiming at their slow physical and psychological liquidation, through medical neglect, torture, abuse, isolation and systematic starvation.”

A number of leaders of the prisoners’ movement have been targeted, held in isolation, repeatedly beaten, starved and denied medical care, including Abdullah Barghouti, Hassan Salameh, Ahed Abu Ghoulmeh, Ibrahim Hamed, Muammar Shahrour, Abbas al-Sayyed, Marwan Barghouti, Mohammed al-Natsheh and Muhannad Shreim.

This policy of “slow assassination” is part and parcel of the ongoing Zionist-imperialist genocide in Gaza and throughout occupied Palestine, one manifestation of the ongoing assassination policy of the occupation targeting the leadership of the Palestinian resistance. We urge supporters of Palestine around the world to act and organize to demand their liberation and that of all Palestinian prisoners as part and parcel of ending the genocide in Gaza — on the road to the liberation of Palestine from the river to the sea.

Ahmad Sa’adat is the imprisoned General Secretary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. One of over 10,000 Palestinian political prisoners, he has been sentenced to 30 years in Zionist prisons for a range of “security-related” political offenses. These charges include membership in a prohibited organization (the PFLP, of which Sa’adat is General Secretary), holding a post in a prohibited organization, and incitement, for a speech Sa’adat made following the Israeli assassination of his predecessor, Abu Ali Mustafa, in August 2001, in which he declared “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.” In retaliation for the murder of Abu Ali Mustafa, on 17 October 2001, fighters from the PFLP’s armed wing assassinated Rehavam Ze’evi, the notoriously far-right, racist Tourism Minister in Ariel Sharon’s Israeli government, in the Hyatt hotel in Jerusalem.

Born in 1953, Sa’adat is the child of refugees expelled from their home in the village of Deir Tarif, near Ramleh, in the Nakba of 1948. A math teacher by training, he is married to Abla Sa’adat, herself a noted activist, and is the father of four children. He has been involved in the Palestinian national movement since 1967, when he became active in the student movement. He was elected General Secretary of the PFLP following the assassination of Abu Ali Mustafa.

On 15 January 2002, Sa’adat attended a meeting with “Palestinian Authority” security chief Tawfiq Tirawi under false pretenses, from which he was abducted and taken to the Muqata’a compound in Ramallah, then-PA President Yasser Arafat’s headquarters, as part of “security coordination” with the Zionist regime. In a deal involving the Zionist regime, Britain and the U.S., Sa’adat was then held in a Palestinian Authority prison in Jericho for over four years under the oversight of U.S., Canadian and British guards along with Ahed Abu Ghoulmeh, Majdi Rimawi, Hamdi Qur’an, Basil al-Asmar and Fouad Shobaki. The director of the US/British “supervision” of the prisoners at Jericho Prison formerly ran the infamous Maze Detention Center for Britain in the occupied North of Ireland, where Irish republican prisoners were held, and another British official there was later involved in creating the “White Helmets” in Syria.

In January 2006, he was elected to the Palestinian Legislative Council on the Abu Ali Mustafa slate. These were the famous PLC elections won by the Change and Reform bloc, aligned with Hamas, the Islamic Resistance Movement. On 14 March 2006, days before Ismail Haniyeh was to take office as prime minister — after making a clear commitment in the electoral campaign to free Palestinian prisoners held in PA jails under “security coordination” — the Zionist military stormed that prison at Jericho as the U.S., British and Canadian guards stepped away to aid the assault. They killed two Palestinian guards and abducted Sa’adat and five fellow prisoners and took them to occupation military prisons.

He was arrested by the Israeli occupation on numerous occasions, notably in 1970, 1973, 1975, 1976, 1989 and 1992 for a total of 10 years of detention.

In 1993, he was elected to the Political Bureau of the PFLP and became responsible for the West Bank sector in 1994. In this context, he was arrested several times between 1994 and 1996 by the Palestinian Authority as part of security coordination with the Israeli occupation established following the Oslo accords of 1993.

On 25 December 2008, Sa’adat was sentenced to 30 years in the colonial occupation prisons. His lengthy sentence, produced by a Zionist military court, was intended as a mechanism for imprisoning the resistance and the commitment of the Palestinian people to seek freedom, justice, liberation and self-determination. Sa’adat consistently and repeatedly refused to recognize the legitimacy of the illegitimate court, refusing to stand and delivering statements of rejection.

Since that time, he has continued his leadership of the Palestinian prisoners’ movement behind bars. He was held in isolation for nearly three years, and was repeatedly denied family visits. Several major Palestinian prisoners’ hunger strikes, including the September-October 2011 hunger strike and the April-May 2012 hunger strike, placed an end to isolation as a central demand, including an end to the isolation of Sa’adat. Sa’adat was finally released from isolation and returned to the general prison population in late May 2012, following the agreement to end the prisoners’ hunger strike. During the strike, Sa’adat was hospitalized due to the severe physical stress of consuming only salt and water.

He has participated in multiple hunger strikes and collective protests, including the 2015 hunger strike against administrative detention, the 2017 Dignity Strike, the 2016 strike in solidarity with Bilal Kayed, and the 2019 hunger strike.

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Today,  over 66 Palestinian prisoners have been martyred due to torture, assault, starvation and medical neglect since 7 October 2023, and leaders of the prisoners’ movement like Sa’adat are being particularly targeted for torture, isolation and liquidation behind colonial bars.

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. 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.

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!