13 Mar 2021; MEMO: A Jordanian newspaper confirmed on Thursday that the International Criminal Police Organisation (INTERPOL) has dropped the arrest warrant against the freed Palestinian prisoner Ahlam Al-Tamimi.
Al-Ghad newspaper stated that INTERPOL's decision came after the US Department of Justice included Al-Tamimi on its terrorism list on charges of participating in the bombing of an Israeli restaurant in 2001, during which two US nationals were killed.
The newspaper published a document it said was issued by INTERPOL, in which the organisation announced that Al-Tamimi, born on 20 October, 1980, is no longer subject to an INTERPOL notice since the date of the document's issuance.
After nearly nine years since her release under a swap deal between Hamas and Israel, the case of Al-Tamimi, the first woman to join Ezz Ad-Din Al-Qassam Brigades, still draws great interest and attention as US lawmakers have been demanding Jordan to hand her over to Washington for years.
Al-Tamimi spent ten years in Israeli prisons after being sentenced to life imprisonment 16 times on charges of participating in a suicide attack. Like other prisoners, she was subjected to torture and solitary confinement and experienced harsh conditions in the occupation detention centres.
On 18 October, 2011, Israel released Al-Tamimi and handed her over to Jordan as part of the Wafa Al-Ahrar prisoner exchange deal between Israel and Hamas, in which Israel released 1,047 detainees in exchange for the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. The swap deal also included Al-Tamimi's fiancé (whom she later married), Nizar Barghouti, who was detained in 1993 and sentenced to life in prison by Israel.
