RAMALLAH, Friday, January 10, 2019 (WAFA) – Israeli authorities on Friday released a Syrian national who has been in Israeli detention for five years, according to the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society (PPS).
Sidqi al-Maqt, 53, was jailed in 2015 on alleged charges of “treason and espionage, support for terrorism and contact with a hostile organization”, and had been sentenced to 11 years in prison.
Al-Maqt, who comes from Majdal Shams, a Druze village in Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, had rejected an Israeli release offer in November last year on condition of being deported to the Syrian capital of Damascus.
In April last year, Israel freed two Syrian prisoners back to Syria in an initial goodwill gesture for the return of the body of Zachary Baumel, an Israeli soldier who in 1928 was declared missing in action in Lebanon. His body was recently discovered by Russian forces in Syria.
There are roughly 20,000 native Syrian nationals in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights and do not recognize Israel‘s sovereignty over the occupied territory.
M.N
