Today, Monday, the Israeli occupation authorities released the "Sheikh of the Prisoners," Major General Fouad Al-Shobaki, from Gaza City, after 17 years of detention.

Al-Shobaki was transferred to the Tarqumiya checkpoint, in preparation for his transfer to Ramallah, where his family lives.

The Israeli occupation forces had kidnapped him in 2006 from Jericho prison, along with the Secretary-General of the Popular Front, Ahmed Saadat, in addition to their comrades, Ahed Abu Ghulami, Hamdi Qaraan, Basil Asmar, Majdi al-Rimawi, and Yasser Abu Turki.

The military court of the occupation sentenced him to 20 years in prison, which was later reduced to 17 years.

The Israeli Occupation Court had refused to consider his requests for early release, and the court, which was held in the city of Beersheba in occupied Palestine, said: Al-Shobaki still poses a real threat to the security of the occupation.

Al-Shobaki was born on March 12, 1940 in Gaza. He is a Palestinian politician and soldier with the rank of major general. He was responsible for the central military financial administration in the Palestinian security services, a close confidant of the late President Yasser Arafat, and a member of the Fatah Revolutionary Council and the Supreme Military Council for the Palestinian Revolution.

Shobaki has been ill since 2006; He suffers from prostate cancer and many other diseases, and although he is 83 years old, and suffers from many ailments in his eyes, stomach, and heart, and suffers from high blood pressure, the occupation refused a petition to release him after serving two-thirds of the term.

It is noteworthy that Al-Shobaki's wife died in 2011, and he has 6 children and 9 grandchildren, most of whom he does not know.