Longest-serving Palestinian prisoner released from Israeli prison | Israel-Palestine conflict News

Karim Younis, 66, has been released from Israeli prisons after serving 40 years for the killing of an Israeli soldier.

Occupied East Jerusalem – The longest-serving Palestinian prisoner, Karim Younis, has been released after serving 40 years in Israeli prisons.

Israeli prison authorities released Younis, 66, from Hadarim prison just north of Tel Aviv at dawn on Thursday morning.

He was arrested in 1983 and charged in Israeli courts with the killing of an Israeli soldier in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights three years prior.

Younis hails from the Palestinian village of Ara within Israel, where crowds of relatives and friends greeted him on Thursday.

Reporting from Ara, Al Jazeera’s Imran Khan said Younis was released at 5:30am (02:30GMT) and that people had poured into the streets of his village to welcome him.

“He was a key figure in the Palestinian struggle,” said Khan. “He is seen as somebody who was a rising star within Palestinian politics when he was arrested and charged with murder.”

While the vast majority of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails are from the occupied West Bank, Younis is a Palestinian citizen of Israel.

“The Palestinians say he was simply resisting the occupation, the Israelis say this was an internal Israeli matter. He was originally sentenced to life, which was then commuted to 40 years. He is being released simply for the fact that he served his sentence,” added Khan.

Israeli military intelligence visited Younis’ family prior to his release and “told them not to mark it”, said Khan. However, it appears that the family and villagers in Ara have disregarded those instructions.

According to local media reports, Younis was released by Israeli authorities without prior notice early in the morning, in an effort to prevent supporters from gathering in front of the prison. Younis was dropped off in a police car at a bus station in nearby Raanana, north of Tel Aviv.

He managed to contact his family by using a passer-by’s phone before he was picked up by a relative and brought to his hometown of Ara.

Israeli authorities have not commented on the reports.

There are some 4,700 Palestinian prisoners currently held in Israeli prisons, including 150 children and 835 people held without trial or charge.