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Israel frees 22 Palestinian prisoners

JERUSALEM: Israel granted early release on Wednesday to 22 Palestinians jailed for common crimes in a gesture to mark the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramazan.

The release of the 22, who included two men convicted of murder, was not connected with the freeing in recent months under an interim peace accord of more than 380 Palestinian political activists jailed for security-related offences.

"It has nothing to do with any peace agreements between us and the Israelis," Hisham Abdel-Razek, the Palestinian minister responsible for prisoner affairs, told Reuters.

He said the Palestinian Authority had no plans to welcome home the 22 at crossings into the self-ruled Gaza Strip and the West Bank, as it has with the political releases.

The Israeli Prisons Authority said 20 of those released on Wednesday had served parts of one-year prison terms for illegal entry to Israel.

Israel has freed 383 Palestinian and other Arab political prisoners under the terms of an interim peace deal signed by Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian President Yasser Arafat last September.

Thirty-three of the number were released last week, including seven Palestinians who were the first residents of Arab East Jerusalem to receive amnesty since the landmark Oslo interim peace accords in 1993.

Palestinian officials say 1,624 political prisoners remain in Israeli jails.

Abdel-Razek said a Palestinian-Israeli committee was likely to meet after Ramadan to discuss the release of more political prisoners. "We will be working on new lists of names of those to be freed," he said.-Reuters