By KUNA
Ramallah : Israeli Deputy Defence Minister Matan Vilnai said on Saturday that Israel might free Palestinian popular prisoner Marwan Barghouthi in exchange for an Israeli soldier captured by Hamas in 2006.
Vilnai’s comment came in an Israeli radio interview where he added “we freed terrorists with blood on their hands and Barghouthi will apparently figure on the list of prisoners that we would be ready to exchange for Gilad Shalit.” “The reality is very hard, and there are a lot of terrorist killers in our jails…but we are ready to do a lot to recover Gilad,” Vilnai noted.
Israel said earlier it would not release Barghouthi, a popular West Bank leader from Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas’s Fatah party currently serving five life sentences for alleged involvement in deadly attacks on Israelis.
Speculators believe that the prisoners swap process between Hamas and Israel is done under Egyptian mediation, adding that along with Barghouthi 350 Palestinian will also be sent free and after Shalit’s handover Israel to release another 500 Palestinians in two months’ time.
Israel currently holds more than 11 thousands Palestinian prisoners, among them those who spend more than 27 years in Israeli jails.