MADRID, 5 Ene. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Israeli authorities have released this Thursday the Palestinian Karim Yunis, who has spent 40 years in prison after his arrest in 1983 along with two relatives after the kidnapping and murder of an Israeli soldier three years earlier.
Younis was sentenced to death by terrorism for the assassination of the soldier, Avraham Bromberg, although the sentence was later reduced to life imprisonment and subsequently commuted in 2012 to 40 years in prison by the then Israeli president, Shimon Peres.
Karim and Maher Yunis, residents of Israel’s northern Israeli-majority Arab city of Ara, murdered Bromberg after kidnapping him after offering to drive him home from his base in the Golan Heights.
The man, the Palestinian who has spent the longest time in prison on security charges, has been released early in the day from the Hadarim prison, located north of Tel Aviv, according to the newspaper ‘The Times of Israel’. Maher Yunis is scheduled to be released in two weeks.
The Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben Gvir, would have ordered that the release of Karim Yunis take place before dawn to avoid celebrations in front of the prison, as reported by the Israeli television channel Channel 13. In fact, although the family of the man has gone to Hadarim to pick him up, he has been transferred in an Israel Prison Service vehicle to the Ranana crossing, where he has later been picked up by his family.
“Until we impose the death penalty on the terrorists, I will do everything possible, with the help of God, to get them released from prison in a humiliating way,” the minister said in a brief message on his Twitter account.
Ben Gvir, leader of the far-right party Otzma Yehudit, would also have asked the Police to avoid celebrations in Ara, located a few kilometers from Zichron Yaakov, where Bromberg’s home was located and where his family still lives.
Bromberg’s sister, Adah, has pointed out in statements to the newspaper ‘Israel Hayom’ that the situation is “unsustainable” and that the family thought that those responsible for the death of their brother would spend their lives behind bars. “Who thought she would be in a situation like this?” she has asked herself. “It’s unthinkable that people like that can walk among us, laugh and have a good time. It’s a catastrophe. We don’t know what to do. It takes me back to the day Avi (Avraham) was killed,” she lamented.
For his part, the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmud Abbas, has congratulated Yunis, a member of Al Fatá, on his release and has said that he represents a symbol of the Palestinian people and the free world, as reported by the Palestinian agency WAFA news. Abbas has stated that the prisoners are the cause of the entire Palestinian prisoner and one of his priorities, while he has stressed that the authorities will work to achieve their release from Israeli jails.
The Palestinian Prime Minister, Mohamad Shtayé, has expressed himself along these lines, affirming that all Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails will eventually achieve their freedom and has asked international Human Rights organizations to achieve this, especially in the cases of women, minors and sick.
