OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, 23 January 2004 — Israel’s prison authority has asked that firebrand Palestinian political leader Marwan Barghouti be kept in solitary confinement for another six months. “The Beesheva district court was asked to keep Marwan Barghouti in solitary confinement for another six months,” a spokesman for the prison authority, Ofer Lefler, said. Lefler said the request was justified because “Barghouti is still involved in the planning of attacks in Israel,” from his prison cell at the Ohalei Keidar jail south of Beersheva, in northern Israel. Barghouti, 44, is the leader of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement in the West Bank.
He was arrested in April 2002 and is standing trial on 26 counts of murder and heading the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades. His supporters said last December he had been kept in solitary confinement for the past 11 months and forbidden from receiving visitors since his arrest.
