Wednesday, February 01, 2012

1-Feb-12: One down, 1026 to go

Click to enlarge this celebratory 2011 snapshot of
convicted (but freed) Palestinian Arab terrorists in Gaza returning to action
Yesterday, the IDF announced it had taken into custody one of the 1,027 terrorists released in the October 2011 deal with Hamas for the freedom of the Israeli hostage Gilad Shalit. The Israeli news sources that originally reported this on Tuesday seem to have published (in more than one case) the wrong name. Challah Hu Akbar published this about yesterday's confusion.

What we know about the man arrested yesterday is that his name is Mahmud Abdallah Abd al-Rahman Abu Sariya. He appears at position number 189 in the official terrorists-going-free list published by the Israel Prison Service. In May 2002 when he was 32, he and a colleague walked up to the Beer-Sheva Old City branch of an Israeli bank and placed a package on the ground before fleeing for their lives. (Hebrew report here.) That package contained a bomb that thankfully failed to explode completely. As a result, "only" ten people were injured. 

The terrorists intended to execute a massacre (16 Israelis were killed a few days earlier in a Hamas bombing attack on a club in Rishon Leziyon), and would probably have succeeded but for the incompetence or bad luck of the bomb-maker.  Abu Sariya was sentenced to 38 years in prison, and was unjustly released after serving less than nine. 

Free and at liberty to do whatever constructive thing came into his head, he re-established himself in terrorism and, fortunately, will be out of action again for some time to come. He will surely be the very last of the unjustly-freed Shalit deal convicts to return to terrorism. 

Surely the very last.

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