PA daily article on terrorist Ahlam Tamimi the day before her release in Shalit exchange
Terrorist Ahlam Tamimi led a suicide bomber to the Sbarro pizza shop in Jerusalem in August 2001. 15 people were murdered in the attack, many of them children. In October 2011, Tamimi was released from Israeli prison as part of the Shalit prisoner exchange deal brokered between the Israeli government and Hamas. The official PA daily wrote the following article on Ahlam Tamimi the day before her release:
Headline: "Ahlam Tamimi will not wait 1584 years to be released...!"
"No one at Bir Zeit University would have believed that Ahlam Tamimi could be a member of a radical, top secret military organization such as the Shahid (Martyr) Izz A-Din Al-Qassam Brigades, the Hamas movement's military wing. Likewise, no one knows what caused Ahlam, a spirited young woman... studying journalism at the university in order to realize her aspirations, to become a fighter, even if she herself has said that it was the occupation which drove the Palestinians to resist it in every way... Ahlam was born on Oct. 20, 1980, in the city of Zarka, in Jordan, to a Palestinian family... She returned to Palestine in order to study journalism and communications at Bir Zeit University. She had only one semester left [to complete] when the Al-Aqsa Intifada (i.e., the Palestinian terror campaign, 2000-2005) broke out, with unprecedented violence in the Palestinian territories, as evidenced in the terrible murder policy of the Ehud Barak and Ariel Sharon government. Ahlam tried to 'fight' the occupation in her way, focusing on a program which she presented on local television broadcast in Ramallah, which covered the occupation's actions. In her journalistic work, Ahlam encountered the harsh reality and the tragic stories brought about by the occupation, and decided to take another big step. At the same time, her friend from the faculty of journalism and communications, Wael Daghlas of the Al-Qassam Brigades, thought that she was suited to join the Brigades... The dreamy student and conscientious journalist turned into a different sort of woman - she began a race against time to participate in carrying out operations (i.e., terror attacks) in West Jerusalem.
The article goes on to describe her role in the Sbarro attack, and then her arrest and trial:
After a period of training, she carried out her first activity on July 27, 2001, when she carried out surveillance on the streets of western Jerusalem without attracting attention, aided by her modern clothing and pleasant appearance. Her mission was to choose places to carry out bombing operations planned by Abdallah Barghouti, as revenge for every [Israeli] assassination operation. Her most prominent operation was her assistance in carrying out the bombing attack which shocked western Jerusalem on Aug. 9, 2001 (i.e., the Sbarro restaurant attack), whose ramifications affected regional and world leaders. Ahlam patrolled Jerusalem in her car and set the route which the one who would carry out [the operation], Izz A-Din Al-Masri, would take from Ramallah to Jerusalem. The next day she took the guitar which Abdallah Barghouti had booby-trapped, and joined Izz A-Din Al-Masri. She asked him to carry the guitar over his shoulder. These were moments laden with emotion between them, as she pointed out the place to him and left him to take his final walk while she returned to Ramallah. When she was arrested afterwards, she was tortured and the Israeli court gave her 16 life sentences, meaning 1584 years... Ahlam dealt with the trial with a smile and her words to the judges: 'I don't recognize the legitimacy of this court; I do not wish to present my name or age to you... I present myself to you through my actions, with which you are very familiar... My name is Ahlam, and I shall remain thus until I attain the dream of my Palestinian people to rid this land of you.' She became engaged in prison to another prisoner, her cousin Nizar, who belongs to Fatah; his father is Dr. Samir Shehadeh, a member of the Fatah leadership."
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Headline: "Ahlam Tamimi will not wait 1584 years to be released...!"
"No one at Bir Zeit University would have believed that Ahlam Tamimi could be a member of a radical, top secret military organization such as the Shahid (Martyr) Izz A-Din Al-Qassam Brigades, the Hamas movement's military wing. Likewise, no one knows what caused Ahlam, a spirited young woman... studying journalism at the university in order to realize her aspirations, to become a fighter, even if she herself has said that it was the occupation which drove the Palestinians to resist it in every way... Ahlam was born on Oct. 20, 1980, in the city of Zarka, in Jordan, to a Palestinian family... She returned to Palestine in order to study journalism and communications at Bir Zeit University. She had only one semester left [to complete] when the Al-Aqsa Intifada (i.e., the Palestinian terror campaign, 2000-2005) broke out, with unprecedented violence in the Palestinian territories, as evidenced in the terrible murder policy of the Ehud Barak and Ariel Sharon government. Ahlam tried to 'fight' the occupation in her way, focusing on a program which she presented on local television broadcast in Ramallah, which covered the occupation's actions. In her journalistic work, Ahlam encountered the harsh reality and the tragic stories brought about by the occupation, and decided to take another big step. At the same time, her friend from the faculty of journalism and communications, Wael Daghlas of the Al-Qassam Brigades, thought that she was suited to join the Brigades... The dreamy student and conscientious journalist turned into a different sort of woman - she began a race against time to participate in carrying out operations (i.e., terror attacks) in West Jerusalem.
The article goes on to describe her role in the Sbarro attack, and then her arrest and trial:
After a period of training, she carried out her first activity on July 27, 2001, when she carried out surveillance on the streets of western Jerusalem without attracting attention, aided by her modern clothing and pleasant appearance. Her mission was to choose places to carry out bombing operations planned by Abdallah Barghouti, as revenge for every [Israeli] assassination operation. Her most prominent operation was her assistance in carrying out the bombing attack which shocked western Jerusalem on Aug. 9, 2001 (i.e., the Sbarro restaurant attack), whose ramifications affected regional and world leaders. Ahlam patrolled Jerusalem in her car and set the route which the one who would carry out [the operation], Izz A-Din Al-Masri, would take from Ramallah to Jerusalem. The next day she took the guitar which Abdallah Barghouti had booby-trapped, and joined Izz A-Din Al-Masri. She asked him to carry the guitar over his shoulder. These were moments laden with emotion between them, as she pointed out the place to him and left him to take his final walk while she returned to Ramallah. When she was arrested afterwards, she was tortured and the Israeli court gave her 16 life sentences, meaning 1584 years... Ahlam dealt with the trial with a smile and her words to the judges: 'I don't recognize the legitimacy of this court; I do not wish to present my name or age to you... I present myself to you through my actions, with which you are very familiar... My name is Ahlam, and I shall remain thus until I attain the dream of my Palestinian people to rid this land of you.' She became engaged in prison to another prisoner, her cousin Nizar, who belongs to Fatah; his father is Dr. Samir Shehadeh, a member of the Fatah leadership."
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