Mohammed Qassem Ardah (39), Mahmoud Abdullah's brother.Mahmoud Abdullah Ardah (46), a member of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, was imprisoned since 1996 and was convicted for carrying out terror attacks and membership in Islamic Jihad.His trial was ongoing at the time of the escape. Arrested for organizing numerous attacks against Israelis during the Second Intifada including a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv and an attack on a Likud polling station, as well as two shooting attacks on buses in November 2018 and January 2019. Zakaria Zubeidi (45), Commander of the Fatah's al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades in Jenin.Members serving life sentences after being convicted of planning or carrying out attacks that killed Israelis, while the youngest prisoner had been held without charge for two years in administrative detention: The escapees Įxcept Zubeidi, the escaped prisoners were Islamic Jihad Surveillance footage captured someone thought to be one of the suspects crossing into the West Bank near the village of Jalamah through a gap in the West Bank barrier. After hearing that a significant number of security forces were deployed along the border with the West Bank, they decided to split into three pairs and go into hiding in northern Israel. They then spent less than an hour in the local mosque where they showered and changed clothes before leaving town. īased on interrogations of recaptured prisoners, Shin Bet determined that after escaping, the six men walked about 7 kilometers (4.3 miles) to the Israeli-Arab town of Na'ura, where they asked a few local residents to drive them to Jenin and were refused. At 3:29 am, the staff reported that three inmates were missing. At Gilboa Prison, prison staff carried out a headcount of the inmates. At around 3:00 am, farmers from the localities near the prison reported suspicious figures observed in the agricultural areas of the localities. At 2:14 am, the deputy commander of the Beit She'an police station informed the prison control center about the reports of suspicious figures in the prison's vicinity that had come in. An employee at a gas station in the area later reported a man who looked strange passing through the area. Within minutes, a patrol car arrived at the scene and began scanning it. The first report regarding a suspected escape reached the police at 1:49 am, from a citizen driving on Route 71 who called the police and reported that he saw figures running in the fields. Although it was initially suspected that some of them had been picked up by a waiting car, Israeli investigators later determined that they had no accomplices on the outside and had traveled on foot the entire time. The prisoners left their prison uniforms outside the tunnel and changed clothes. However, the guard who was supposed to be monitoring the video feed was allegedly watching television instead. As the prisoners emerged from the tunnel, guard dogs in the prison yard started barking, activating a warning system which trained security cameras in the direction that the dogs were barking. She later claimed that she had got up after hearing noises but didn't see anything and went back to sleep. A guard in a nearby watchtower was asleep at the time. The hole from which the prisoners emerged was directly beneath a watchtower which was unmanned due to a manpower shortage. The escape occurred on 6 September 2021, in the middle of the night, after 1:00 am. The request was accepted with no suspicions raised. A day before the escape, the most senior prisoner of the group, Zakaria Zubeidi, requested a transfer to the cell where the five other prisoners were located. The prisoners hid the entry hole under a floorboard. A guard responsible for maintaining the sewer system had noticed blockages but did not report them to prison authorities. The excavation was done with plates and pan handles, and dumped the excavated dirt in the prison's sewer system, garbage cans, and hollow shafts. A probe of the escape led by Shin Bet concluded that the digging begun as early as November 2020, and at least 11 prisoners helped dig the tunnel. The tunnel was about 22 meters long and had been surreptitiously dug over an extended period prior to the escape. The prisoners escaped through an underground tunnel in the prison's drainage system from the bathroom of cell number 5 in the second branch of the prison. Ĭellphone call barriers were installed in the prison, but they were activated at an inefficient level, contrary to regulations and following protests from the part of the prisoners. In August 2014, a similar escape attempt was foiled when an underground tunnel that prisoners had been digging was discovered by Israeli security forces. Shortly after, it became a separate independent prison with high security level designed for security prisoners following the Second Intifada. Gilboa Prison opened in 2004, and first it was called Shita B as part of the Shita Prison system.
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