Watch: Palestinian jailed as teen for stabbing Israelis freed after 9 years
Ahmad Manasra, now 23, was just 13 when he carried out the attack in October 2015 in Israeli-occupied and annexed east Jerusalem.
"He was released today," said Nareman Shehadeh Zoabi, an attorney for rights group Adalah and part of a legal team representing him.
"His family met him and now the family is taking the time with him and to be able to stay quiet for some time alone with Ahmed," she told AFP.
Manasra was originally sentenced in 2016 to 12 years in prison, but his term was later reduced to nine and a half years by Israel's supreme court.
AFPTV footage on Thursday showed Manasra, wearing a surgical mask and with his hair closely cropped, at an Israeli security facility in Jerusalem alongside his father.
Watch the video below:
He was found guilty of the attempted murder of a 20-year-old man and a 13-year-old boy in the Jewish settlement neighbourhood of Pisgat Zeev in east Jerusalem, his lawyer said at the time.
He carried out the attack with his cousin Hassan, who was shot dead by security forces on the spot.
Between Manasra's conviction and sentencing, Israeli law was amended to allow civilian courts to convict children as young as 12 for "terrorist offences".
Manasra, an east Jerusalem resident, was the youngest Palestinian to be convicted by an Israeli civilian court at the time.
Zoabi, the lawyer at Adalah legal centre, said her team had worked to secure Manasra's early release in 2022 but failed to secure it.
Among other things, his health had declined drastically after he spent nearly two years in solitary confinement.
Rights group Amnesty International had also raised concerns at the time, warning of his deteriorating psychological condition.
"Ahmad Manasra's release today is a huge relief for him and for his family, but nothing can undo the years of injustice, abuse, trauma and ill-treatment he endured behind bars," Amnesty regional director Heba Morayef said in a statement on Thursday.
Manasra initially pleaded not guilty, saying he had intended to frighten the Israelis, not kill them.
The stabbing incident came at the beginning of a months-long wave of Palestinian knife, gun and car-ramming attacks.
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Middle East Eye
3 hours ago
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Middle East Eye
4 hours ago
- Middle East Eye
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In Algeria, too, in response to anti-colonial resistance from the FLN, the French forcibly rounded up thousands of peasants at gunpoint and relocated them to guarded settlements known as camps de regroupement. The aim was to drain public support from the FLN by isolating the rural population, controlling their movements, and restricting access to resources. By the end of the Algerian War in 1962, some two million Algerians were confined to these camps, suffering from disease and malnutrition. Future freedom fighters From the British to the French to the Israelis, settler-colonial tactics have followed the same brutal logic - even as their scale and cruelty have evolved. Across time and geography, the settler-colonial project has relied not only on physical conquest but also on the erasure of identity, the fragmentation of community, and the suppression of future resistance. To a violent colonising power, a child with a book, a dream, or a memory is more dangerous than any weapon Again I ask: why the children of Gaza? They represent exactly that future - one rooted in knowledge and historical memory. In a society with one of the highest literacy rates in the region, despite decades of siege and bombardment, educated youth are not only symbols of survival; they are agents of liberation. To a violent colonising power, a child with a book, a dream, or a memory is more dangerous than any weapon. Targeting children, then, is not collateral damage. It is strategy. It is part of a broader campaign to destroy hope, overwrite the future, and maintain the machinery of occupation through fear and erasure. The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
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