Category World News

After being led onto a stage by armed Hamas fighters on Saturday, Tal Shoham and Avera Mengistu, the first two captives, were handed over to the Red Cross in Rafah, southern Gaza.

In a separate ceremony, three more captives, Eliya Cohen, Omer Wenkert, and Omer Shem Tov, were later released to Red Cross officials in Nuseirat, central Gaza.

Palestinian sources told Al Jazeera that Hisham al-Sayed, the sixth captive, will be handed over to Israeli authorities without a ceremony.

The 37-year-old Bedouin Israeli, who was taken prisoner in Gaza in April 2015, is scheduled to be detained in a location in Gaza City’s northern region.

In the first stage of the ceasefire, which ended on January 19, the six are the last of a group of 33 to be freed.

Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud, reporting from Nuseirat, said a large crowd has gathered to witness the release of the three captives.

“We see reinforcements from the Qassam Brigades in order to maintain order and safety of the process”, he reported, referring to Hamas’s armed wing. &nbsp, “Compared with past handovers, the scene here at Nuseirat looks more organised”.

Our correspondent claimed that Hamas’s explanation of the plan’s insistence to release four captives in Nuseirat was in vain.

Professor Sami al-Arian from Istanbul Zaim University stated in an interview with Al Jazeera that Hamas is trying to show its allies that it is responsible by “showing the whole world that they were trying to keep them [the captives] alive and keep them safe. “

Later on Saturday, Israel is expected to release 602 Palestinians held in its jails. According to Hamas, there are 445 Palestinians who were detained by Israeli forces during its war on Gaza, as well as dozens who are currently serving lengthy or life sentences.

The misidentification of Shiri Bibas’ body in a report on Thursday as that of her husband and two young sons in the Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel had threatened to derail the fragile ceasefire.

Salman Rushdie, the author who stabbed and partially blinded him at a New York literary award ceremony, was found guilty of attempted murder by Hadi Matar.

The assault on Rushdie by Matar on stage at an arts institute event in August 2022 was decided by jurors on Friday.

The Satanic Verses author, 77, was stabbed with a knife multiple times in the head, neck, torso and left hand, blinding his right eye and damaging his liver and intestines, and requiring emergency surgery and months of recovery.

Matar, 27, can be seen in the video of the attack as Rushdie was introduced to the audience to discuss protecting writers from harm. During the seven days of testimony, the jury was given access to some of the videos.

For stabbing Henry Reese, the co-founder of Pittsburgh’s City of Asylum, a nonprofit organization that assists exiled writers, who was speaking with Rushdie that morning, Matar was found guilty of attempted murder in the second degree as well as assault in the second degree.

He will be sentenced on April 23 and faces up to 25 years in prison.

Nathaniel Barone, a public defender representing Matar, said his client was disappointed by the verdict.

“The video, I think, was extremely damaging to Mr Matar”, Barone said outside the courtroom, referring to a video of the attack that was shown repeatedly to jurors. “It’s that old expression: A picture is worth a thousand words”.

Matar quietly uttered “Free Palestine” as he was led out of the courtroom in handcuffs, reiterating remarks he has frequently made while both entering and leaving the trial.

New York-based British American Rushdie, an atheist born into a Muslim Kashmiri family in India, has faced death threats since the 1988 publication of his novel, The Satanic Verses, which Ayatollah Khomeini, then Iran’s supreme leader, denounced as blasphemous.

American Lebanese Matar claimed that he had attacked Rushdie because he had attacked Islam after the knife-assault.

Matar is also accused of attempting to kill Rushdie in a terrorist-related plot and of providing material support to Hezbollah in Lebanon, which the US designates as a terrorist organization, in federal court documents. Hezbollah had endorsed Khomeini’s fatwa against Rushdie.

Here is the situation on Saturday, February 22:

Fighting

• Three people were hurt by a guided bombing attack by Russian forces in the southern Zaporizhzhia region, according to the regional governor. A village west of Huliaipole was attacked on Thursday, killing one person.

Politics and diplomacy

• Donald Trump, the president of the US, has changed his position and claimed that Kyiv would soon sign a minerals agreement with Washington as part of an effort to put an end to the conflict. He had earlier attributed the conflict’s origins to Ukraine earlier this week.
• Trump also emphasized that while Washington is pursuing discussions to end Russia’s conflict in Ukraine, Ukraine has no cards to play with. He is also urging Kyiv to sign a crucial minerals deal.

Law

Hamas has returned Shiri Bibas’s remains, according to Israel’s Bibas family, one day after it was revealed that the Palestinian organization had returned an unidentified body.

The Israeli government was angered by the misidentification of Bibas in a handover on Friday and threatened to thwart the fragile Gaza ceasefire agreement.

Bibas’s community, Kibbutz Nir Oz, also confirmed her identity on Saturday, just hours before the seventh captive-prisoner exchange under the ceasefire agreement.

“We received the news we feared the most this morning following the Institute of Forensic Medicine’s identification process.” Our Shiri was murdered in captivity and has now returned home to her sons, husband, sister, and all her family to rest”, the Bibas family said in a statement published on Saturday.

Under a ceasefire that has put an end to fighting in Gaza&nbsp since last month, Hamas had agreed to hand over the bodies of Bibas, her two young sons, Kfir and Ariel, as well as the remains of a fourth captive on Thursday.

Hamas claimed that an Israeli airstrike in November 2023 claimed the lives of the children and their mother.

Israel later claimed that one of the bodies did not belong to the older Bibas, despite the fact that there were four bodies delivered.

On Friday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged to “ensure that Hamas pays the full price” for what he described as a “violation” of the ceasefire deal.

Hamas later acknowledged that there might have been a “mix-up of bodies” as a result of Israeli bombings in the area that had resulted in several fatalities.

Basem Naim, a member of the Hamas political bureau, said “unfortunate mistakes” could occur, especially as Israeli bombing had mixed the bodies of Israeli captives and Palestinians, thousands of whom were still buried under the rubble due to relentless Israeli bombardments.

We make it clear in a statement that it is against our values or our duty to keep any bodies or to abide by the agreements and covenants we ratify.

Ismail al-Thawabta, director of the Hamas-run Gaza Government Media Office, said Netanyahu “bears full responsibility for killing her and her children”.

The incident highlighted how fragile the ceasefire agreement, which was reached last month with American support and the assistance of Qatari and Egyptian mediators, is.

602 Palestinians in Israel’s prison, the majority of whom have not been charged or tried before being tried, are set for release on Saturday in exchange for six living prisoners. In the upcoming days, negotiations for the second phase of the ceasefire are anticipated to begin.