Prison door soon to swing open for terrorists
Prison door soon to swing open for terroristsIsrael News Photo: (file)

The government has published the names of the five Lebanese and Hizbullah terrorists to be freed in exchange for kidnapped IDF reservists Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev. Both are presumed by the government to be dead, but their families are holding to faint hope that at least one of them still is alive.

The Israel Prison Service published the list on its website Sunday afternoon, 48 hours before the cabinet was set to meet to give its final approval for the exchange, ostensibly in order to give the public time to appeal the move.

However, for an undisclosed reason, the names were removed from the website shortly after they were published.

Four of the terrorists were captured during the 2006 Second Lebanon War that was ignited with the kidnap of Goldwasser and Regev. Their names are: Khader Zidan, Mahmad Srour, Hussein Suleiman and Maher Kurani.



The fifth is Samir Kuntar, who was sentenced to four terms of life imprisonment for the brutal murders of three Israelis, including a little girl and her father, and the death of a fourth, the child's little sister, in a terror attack he led on Nahariya in 1979.

According to the message on the website, the prisoners are set to be released on Wednesday.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak put off a scheduled trip to the United States on Monday to discuss the Iranian nuclear threat with American defense officials due to the upcoming Hizbullah swap. Barak postponed the planned three-day trip until early August.

Barak had expected to meet with Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley and United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

The Defense Minister expressed disappointment Sunday with the final report submitted Saturday by Hizbullah, in which the terrorist group claimed that captured Israeli Air Force navigator Ron Arad died in 1988, but still failed to produce hard evidence of the fact.

The document received by the Prime Minister's Office on Saturday was comprised of answers to questions from Israeli officials sent to Hizbullah about its prior report on Arad, missing since his aircraft was shot down over Lebanon by Amal terrorists in 1986.

Barak said that despite the inadequacy of the report, he believes as a defense minister, a former chief of general staff, and a former military commander that he has a "moral responsibility" to carry out the deal to return Goldwasser and Regev.