Marwan Barghouti

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Marwan Barghouti (born June 6, 1958) is a Palestinian leader from the West Bank and a leader of the Fatah movement that forms the backbone of the Palestinian Authority and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). On June 6, 2004, he was sentenced to five life sentences for five murders and 40 years imprisonment for attempted murders in terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians.

Barghouti was born in Ramallah, and became active in Fatah at the age of 15. By the age of 18 in 1976, he was arrested by Israel for his involvement in a Palestinian uprising, and learned Hebrew during his time in Israeli prisons. After his release, he returned to the West Bank and became president of the student body at Birzeit University, where he received a bachelor's degree in history and political science and a master's degree in international relations.

Barghouti was one of the major leaders of the First Intifada in 1987, leading Palestinians in a mass uprising against Israeli occupation of the West Bank. During the uprising, he was arrested by Israel and deported to Jordan, where he stayed for seven years until he was permitted to return under the terms of the Oslo Accords in 1994. In 1996, he was elected to the Palestinian Legislative Council, in which he advocated peace with Israel, sometimes coming in conflict with Yasser Arafat. The formal position occupied by Barghouti was the General Secretary of Fatah in the West Bank.

By the summer of 2000, Barghouti and Arafat had grown increasingly at odds with each other, with Barghouti accusing Arafat's administration of corruption and his security services of human rights violations, and Arafat was planning to fire him shortly.

However, as the Second Intifada began, Barghouti became increasingly popular as a leader of the Fatah Tanzim militia. This was perhaps due to the transformation of Tanzim into an organization more resembling terrorist groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad, responsible for dozens of civilian deaths in drive-by shootings. Under Barghouti, the Tanzim has also carried out suicide bombings in Israel under the name al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades.

His role as a leader of the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades landed him on Israel's most-wanted list, and he escaped an Israeli assassination attempt in 2001. However, he was captured by Israel on April 15, 2002 and indicted in civilian court on charges of murder and attempted murder stemming from terrorist activities carried out by forces under his supervision.

Throughout his trial, Barghouti largely refused to offer a defense, arguing instead that the court lacked jurisdiction and that the trial itself was illegal. He was convicted on May 20, 2004 of five counts of murder, one of the victims being a Greek Orthodox monk, resulting from three terror attacks, one north of Jerusalem, one in Tel Aviv and in the West Bank. He was also found guilty of one count of attempted murder resulting from a failed suicide car bomb. He was acquitted of 21 counts of murder in 33 other attacks. On June 6, 2004, he was sentenced to five life sentences for the five murders and 40 years imprisonment for the attempted murder.

External links and references

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