Thursday, the Israeli Occupation announced the formation of an official investigation committee to examine the loopholes that enabled six Palestinian prisoners to escape from the heavily fortified Gilboa Prison at dawn on Monday.
As of Friday morning, the whereabouts of the escapees are still unknown.
The whereabouts of the escaped prisoners still unknown as of Friday morning.
Internal Security Minister Omer Bar Lev said in a statement that he and Prime Minister Naftali Bennett had agreed to form an investigation committee into the absconding case, which will be led by a retired judge.
While touring Ketziot Prison in the Negev earlier Thursday, Bar Lev said that he will “spare no effort” to figure out what went wrong.
The commission of inquiry has been formed as the IOF continues to search the country and the occupied West Bank for escaped detainees. Bennett’s government has yet to approve it.
The army reinforced its forces in the West Bank and deployed in the vicinity of Jenin in the northern occupied West Bank, where the six prisoners, including the leader of the “Al-Aqsa Brigades” Zakaria al-Zubaidi, came from its camp and villages.
Palestinians in the West Bank, especially in Jenin camp, celebrated the escape of the six, and organized marches that included confrontations with Israeli Occupation soldiers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, in solidarity with the escapees.
Palestinian detainees also set their cells on fire in several prisons in recent days, after confrontations broke out between Palestinian detainees and Israeli Occupation prison guards as a result of a “repressive campaign” carried out by the authorities, according to Palestinian Minister of Civil Affairs Hussein Al-Sheikh.
An Israeli Occupation court has ordered a ban on publishing any details of the investigation into the prison break until Oct. 6, including to local media
The escape, according to former Prison Service Commissioner Orit Adato, was a “serious crisis” for the prison service, “even if such incidents are extremely rare.”
In addition to Zubeidi, who is a member of the Fatah movement, there are five members of the Islamic Jihad movement among the escapees, four of whom have been sentenced to life in prison.
Orit Adato said that “the intelligence failure to notice the escape plan early should be one of the main areas of focus for the Jail Service,” stressing that “intelligence personnel inside the prison did not know anything, and this is a real problem.”
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