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"We climbed the tower and went down to the prison": The man who chased the fugitives from Shata prison in 1958 recounts - Walla! news

2021-09-08T11:08:41.939Z


63 years before the 6 terrorists escaped from Gilboa Prison, the place experienced the "Shata Prison Revolt", in which 66 security prisoners escaped. A member of Kibbutz Ein Harod near the prison, Yishai Zimmerman, a discharged soldier with the Medal of Courage, was among the first to come and help capture them. Today he remembers the moment he got into a battle scene near his house


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"We climbed the tower and went down to the prison": The man who chased the fugitives from Shata prison in 1958 recalls

63 years before the 6 terrorists escaped from Gilboa Prison, the place experienced the "Shata Prison Revolt", in which 66 security prisoners escaped.

A member of Kibbutz Ein Harod near the prison, Yishai Zimmerman, a discharged soldier with the Medal of Courage, was among the first to come and help capture them.

Today he remembers the moment he got into a battle scene near his house

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  • Shata Prison

  • prison

  • Gilboa Prison

  • Security prisoners

Eli Ashkenazi

Wednesday, 08 September 2021, 14:00

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Searches in Beit She'an for the six terrorists who escaped from Gilboa Prison (without credit)

On the evening of Thursday, July 31, 1958, Yishai Zimmerman was in the work arrangement room at his kibbutz, Ein Harod Ihud.

Shortly before that, the young officer was discharged from the IDF, after a rich service, which included service in Unit 101 and the paratroopers. His house, Shata Prison.



With him in the work arrangement was another freshman released from the IDF, Lt. "Put.

With them was Yaakov Yanai, older than them, who had already fought in World War II in a British army uniform and two years later was banned on Black Saturday, by the same army in his uniform fighting.

The three of them were still discussing the next day in Pelha and the rest of the economy, when the dentist who occasionally came to the kibbutz said that just now, on his way from Beit She'an, he saw prisoners fleeing.

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"A jailer shouted at us that he was wounded from the inside."

Yishai Zimmerman (Photo: official website, -)

Zimmerman and Tamari Vienna were armed with rifles from the kibbutz's weapons depot and rushed to the prison, a five-minute drive from Ein Harod.

"We arrived at the prison, the gates were closed. The prisoners apparently climbed the walls," Zimmerman, now 88, recalled today.

"Inside, a prisoner shouted that he was wounded. We were told that an anti-RPG from the Beit She'an police was about to arrive and we waited for him for a few minutes to break through the gate with him.

But the ADF officer refused to do so and started driving around the prison. We climbed to the tower, went down to the prison yard and took out the jailer, who was not really injured. When we left the whole IDF and the police were there and did not need us.

we're back home".



The three ended up putting their comrades out of business, but the security forces still had a lot of work to do: 66 security prisoners escaped from prison in what was known as the "Shata Prison Uprising."

Most of the fugitives were infiltrators, or as they were then called, "Padayon."

An Israeli inmate who ran a life sentence in prison alongside the same infiltrators who were arrested, described them as "tough, first-class hard-hearted people."

"None of them was an idealist. They were all criminals who infiltrated Israel with no choice," the prisoner told journalist Yosef Shavit of Davar.



As an example, he told of the escaped prisoner Muhammad Kassi Kolov, a refugee from Eretz Israel, who was sentenced to life in prison in Egypt on a murder charge, and instead of sitting in an Egyptian prison agreed to infiltrate Israel "Padayon".

He was captured in Israel, sentenced to twenty years in prison and during the uprising managed to escape to Jordan.

An article from the Davar newspaper criticizing the "escape failure" from Shata Prison (Photo: Official Website, Israel National Library)

"There was also Muhammad Khalili, who also fled to Jordan," the Israeli prisoner said. He was handcuffed for 15 years and imprisoned for ten years, but was released ten years later. "Imprisonment and after he appealed the verdict, he was sentenced to life imprisonment. When they came here, they did not particularly hate Israel," the prisoner continued, "but the hard work in which they were employed in Shata, erred the country for them."



The same Israeli prisoner interviewed was Yaakov Merhavi.

Six years earlier, when he was 23, he had murdered his father and was sentenced to life in prison.

He ran his prison with the same infiltrators, and he said he was valued as a "man" and treated "just fine."

He was even sometimes asked to mediate between them during conflicts.

The interviewer noted that during his imprisonment, Merhavi spoke almost only Arabic, occasionally had difficulty during the interview, and combined words in Arabic instead of Hebrew words he forgot.



On the eve of the uprising, he saw dozens of prisoners running around with burning torches, planks and iron rods in their hands.

They even managed to break into her weapons and take rifles and pistols from her, including an Uzi submachine gun and two Bern rifles.

Merhavi hit one of the leaders of the rebellion, managed to escape and climbed the prison wall and escaped.

Instead of fleeing to freedom, he got into a car that passed by and asked the driver to drive to the police station in Beit She'an.

When he got there he reported what was happening in prison.

The cover of "This World" from 1958 (Photo: Official Website, Israel National Library)

About forty of the prisoners managed to escape towards Jordan - some to northern Samaria and some towards the Jordan River.

Eleven prisoners were killed in an exchange of gunfire and ten of the fugitives hid in the corn fields around the prison and were caught.

The leader of the uprising, Ahmad Ali Othman who was arrested on suspicion of espionage, was among those captured.

Othman was the Egyptian intelligence man who came to Israel through France in a cover story of an opposition activist of the Nasser regime who works as a journalist.



Nearly two months after the uprising, Merhavi was pardoned by President Yitzhak Ben-Zvi.

When he was released, he noted that prisoners Ali Murad and Eliyahu Cohen also helped suppress the prisoners' revolt and believed that they also deserved pardon, but they did not win it.

Four years later, Merhavi died unexpectedly at his home.



A commission of inquiry was set up and determined, among other things, that cooperation between the police and the prison service should be strengthened and that a special regime should be adopted that would ensure complete strictness in the case of security prisoners.

After 63 years the same guidelines seem to be applied.

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Source: walla

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