In short, Levy and Katz are right, they are just using different spellings. Cohen is simply wrong.

Here’s the story.

Earlier today, Avital Leibovitch, official Israel Defense Forces Spokesperson to the international press, tweeted:

IDF arresteda palestinian-Iman Alshrona Ismael Salama-was one of the people released for the return of #GiladShalit.#terror #defense

— Avital Leibovich (@AvitalLeibovich) January 31, 2012

From Ynet and The Jerusalem Post we learn that the arrested terrorist is 36 years old, first arrested in 2002 and sentenced to 38 years in prison “for his involvement in a 2002 bomb attack in Beersheba which wounded 18 people as well as for a series of shooting attacks during the Second Intifada.” In addition, we learn that he was released around Hebron in the first wave of the Shalit release.

Yet, the ONLY terrorist that matches that description on the Israel Prison Services (IPS) ENGLISH list is Mahmud Abdallah Abd al-Rahman Abu Sariya.

So, who is Iman (Ayman) Alshrona (Sharona) Ismael Salama?

Well, Iman Alshrona Ismael Salama is Mahmud Abdallah Abd al-Rahman Abu Sariya.

Iman Alshrona is his name on the IPS Hebrew list, while Mahmud Abdallah Abd al-Rahman Abu Sariya is his English name. Levy and Katz are simply writing his name in different forms.

Earlier I wrote that Gili Cohen of Haaretz is simply wrong in her report. Here’s why. According to Cohen’s report:

The Israel Defense Forces arrested Mamun Ismyail Salame Stut, a Palestinian man who was released from Israeli prison in October as part of the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange deal. Stut’s arrest makes him the first released prisoner to be recaptured since the prisoner swap.

In short, Israel DID NOT rearrest Mamun Ismyail Salame Stut. According to the IPS list Mamun Ismyail Salame Stut was only serving 25 years, not 38 years, as Levy, Katz and Cohen all reported. More importantly, Mamun Ismyail Salame Stut was RELEASED to Gaza, and Levy, Katz and Cohen all reported that the terrorist had been captured near Hebron.

Update: It appears that the Haaretz Hebrew version of the article does list the arrested terrorist as Ayman Sharona, the English edition still says it was Mamun Ismyail Salame Stut.

Update: As you can tell and as Jim noted in the comments, Cohen says her information was provided by the IDF. I contacted the IDF and received the following response.

We don’t elaborate on reporters who turn to us for comment, but we can safely confirm that we only put out two versions of his name–first the Hebrew version, then the English one. The name ‘Mamun Ismyail Salame Stut’ was never in our files.

Update: Israel Hayom made the same mistake as Haaretz.

The Israel Defense Forces on Tuesday arrested a Palestinian man released as part of the Gilad Schalit prisoner swap, calling him a “security threat.” Mamun Ismyail Salame, 36, was taken into custody after the IDF received intelligence concerning alleged terrorist activities on behalf of Hamas in Judea and Samaria.

I contacted Amir Mizroch, the English editor of Israel Hayom, and he said that he would make the change and within minutes he did. I have been unable to find a email for Gili Cohen to let her know of the mistake, anyone have?

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu criticized Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas for meeting freed Palestinian terrorist Amna Muna during a visit to Turkey on Wednesday.

Muna, who was freed to Turkey during the first stage of the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange swap with Hamas, was serving a life sentence for her part in the murder of Ofir Rahum, an Israeli teen from Ashkelon.

Muna was supposed to go to the Gaza Strip, but she refused to enter the territory – apparently because she is a secular Muslim.

On Wednesday Israel Radio reported that Abbas had met Muna in private during his visit to Turkey after holding a group meeting with the rest of the Palestinians deported to Turkey in the Shalit deal.

In response to Abbas’ meeting, the Prime Minister’s Office released a statement later Wednesday, saying that it was “shocking to see the man who claims to the whole world that he aims for peace with Israel, going as far as Turkey to meet a despicable murderer.”

Fatah strongman Jibril Rajub addressed the PA president’s meeting with Muna, saying the freed prisoner wasn’t in seclusion, telling Israel Radio: “If she doesn’t deserve to live, why did you let her go?”

By the way, I don’t buy the baloney about Muna refusing to go to the Gaza Strip “because she is a secular Muslim.” She refused because she’s afraid what families of inmates she abused while in prison may do to her.

He was from Fatah and she was from Hamas, the two rival Palestinian movements. They were both serving multiple life sentences. They had participated in killings – she for her role in a Jerusalem restaurant bombing, he in connection with the killing of an Israeli.

As lovers go they could not have been more star crossed, yet Nezar and Ahlam Al Tammimi met, fell in love, got engaged and finally married while they were sitting in Israeli jails. Both were among some 450 Palestinian prisoners swapped for Israeli hostage Gilad Shalit last week.

“Nobody believes me when I say that I never ever lost hope. I always saw the light at the end of the tunnel and now I am free,” Ahlam, 31, declares.

Married behind bars, the two now plan a big wedding – as soon as they can finally see each other. They don’t know when that will happen: Under the conditions of their release, Nezar was returned to his home the West Bank while Ahlam was flown to her family in Jordan.

—-

“I met a fellow Palestinian in the university who inspired me, it turned out he was a member of Hamas. I expressed my desire to join them. He told me he has to ask his superior because Ezzeldin Al-Qassam brigades have no female members. After a few days, he came with an approval, which made me the first female Ezzeldin Al-Qassam brigade member,” Ahlam explains.

Ahlam helped Ezz Al Din Al Massri, 20, to blow himself up in Sabarro restaurant in Jerusalem in August 2001, which killed 16 Israelis and injured 150. Her role had been to choose the location and secure transportation to reach that location. Not long after, she was arrested.

—-

Ahlam heard about Nezar Al Tammimi, her relative, 38, who was jailed in 1993 during his university years. He was also studying in Birzeit back then. He was sentenced to life in prison for belonging to a Fatah cell responsible of kidnapping and killing an Israeli in the Jewish community of Beit El near Ramallah. Ahlam admired him. Ahlam actually visited Nezar in jail before she was jailed herself. The spark of mutual admiration that they felt back then developed over time into love.

Ahlam and Nezar started exchanging letters while in jail. “Each letter would take a month to reach Nezar and another month to get his response back. I would place the letter in the mail and send it to my family. My family would send it to Nezar’s family. Nezar’s family would send it to him.”

“Nezar would go through the same process to send me a letter. Our letters were so precious, they took so much time and they were our only means of communication. We would share experiences, express our love and share our virtual dreams of being and living together after our marriage,” Ahlam says with a broad smile and a sparkle in her eyes.

The two were not only separated by bars but by membership in rival movements. After briefly sharing control of the Palestinian Authority, Fatah and Hamas fought each other for control of the Gaza Strip in 2007 and have failed to patch up their differences despite a declaration of national unity last spring.

On an August day in 2005, Nezar’s fellow inmates threw him a party to celebrate his engagement to Ahlam. Simultaneously, Ahlam celebrated a party in parallel with her inmates. After that, their one and only meeting came in March 2010, when they were both summoned by the Israeli intelligence to be questioned about the relationship between them and their future plans.

“After exchanging letters and falling in love we both decided to get engaged even if we were both jailed for life,” she recounts.

Their fathers arranged the documents and sent them copies of the marriage contract in jail. Nezar sent his wife wedding rings but the Israeli prison administration confiscated them all, she says.

—-

Ahlam’s dream now is to settle down after a huge wedding that reunites her with her husband Nezar. “All I dream about now is to live with Nezar, settling down and raising our future children.”

 How odd. I didn’t think Ahlam was the “children” type.

I find it inexplicable that these two murders should get a chance at happiness after they ruined the lives of so many.

I am willing to bet their wedding will be a target rich environment. Just saying.

The Almagor Victims of Terror Association plans to launch an online database of the terrorists with descriptions of their crimes in an effort to prevent future prisoner swaps, The Jerusalem Post has learned.

The head of Almagor, Meir Indor, believes by connecting the names of the terrorists to the specific terror attacks they committed, the public will be less likely to support prisoner swaps in the future.

“We are taking the law into our own hands so that terror victims can get updates on the terrorists who are responsible for specific attacks,” said Indor.

The database, called “Justice for Terror Victims,” will collect information that is available to the public, such as arrests and court transcripts, and compile it in a searchable database.

The Foreign Ministry and some private bloggers have partial lists, but this is the first initiative to have a comprehensive center of information.

More than a dozen volunteers working around the clock in shifts of three have already compiled full entries for 270 terrorists released as part of the Gilad Schalit deal.

It will be uploaded later this week onto the organization’s website, al-magor.com.

The prisoner list released ahead of the Schalit swap by the Prisons Service had dry descriptions for each of those released such as “involvement in unknown terror organization” and “assisted in murder.”

Indor believes that more specific descriptions, such as “the driver who brought the suicide bomber to Sbarro,” will resonate with the public on a deeper level and encourage more of an outcry against future swaps, which was fairly muted in the Schalit deal.

“Personalization works,” said Indor, noting that one reason the Schalit campaign was so successful was that it created an image of Schalit the average Israeli could relate to as a son and a soldier.

He added that the database, which will start with the terrorists released as part of the Schalit swap, will be updated if there are future swaps or if a terrorist is rearrested for committing similar crimes.

Indor said there was an incident during the Schalit affair when the media, using unauthorized lists from Arab media, incorrectly reported the planned release of some terrorists, creating unneeded turmoil for the families of the victims. A centralized database could minimize such occurrences in the future.

“The worst is to sit and not know. Terror victims want to know if their murderer got out or not,” said Indor.

He acknowledged that funds were a serious obstacle for keeping an updated database, or for translating the database into English.

Note how they linked to one of my prisoner posts to make their point about private bloggers with partial lists. That’s what I’m talking about.

But honestly, the Israeli government should have done this. Before the Shalit exchange went ahead.

Come to think of it, the government should be publishing a database of the terrorists in prison, whether released or not released.

Come to think of it, the terrorists shouldn’t be kept alive to make it to prison in the first place.

Freed Palestinian prisoners hold rifles as they ride horses during a celebration of the recent release of hundreds of Palestinians by Israel in Beit Lahiya, northern Gaza Strip, Friday, Oct. 28, 2011. Hundreds of Palestinians were released in exchange for captured Israeli soldier Gilad Schalit earlier this month. (AP Photo/Adel Hana)

[source]

I’m guessing they’re not indicating their intention to become jockeys.

The family of a released Palestinian prisoner is seeking to file a lawsuit against the Israeli prison administration after he became mentally unstable after 12 years of isolation in jail.

Oweida Kallab, 48, was released after 24 years but he spent half that time in isolation, the family says. The experience has left him with severe psychological issues and unable to adapt to life outside.

His brother Awad told UFree, a European prisoners’ rights network: “My brother has a problem sitting on a chair – he adjusts his body as though he is squatting – after more than a decade in isolation in a tiny space.”

Oweida has undergone medical tests which revealed he has a stomach ulcer, a hernia and kidney stones, UFree reported.

This is a guy who received one life sentence. I’m guessing it wasn’t for stealing a loaf of bread. So excuse me if I don’t believe he is any less mentally stable now, nor for lacking sympathy about his kidney stones.

Heck, his ailments might just make him less likely to commit terror again.

“A senior Hamas official praised the “strength” Israel showed in a prisoner exchange that swapped more than 1,000 Palestinian convicts for one captured Israeli soldier.

To do what Israel did shows the value Israeli society places on human life,” Salah al-Arouri, a member of the Islamist militant group’s politburo, said this week on Israel Radio from Damascus, Syria.

“This is a pillar of Israel’s strength – to wage a war to free one man, to free a thousand prisoners for him,” he said, referring to the Jewish state’s efforts to free Staff Sgt. Gilad Schalit from his Hamas captors. “This is the strength of a society and an army.”

—-

“As someone from the outside, as an enemy, I would prefer that Israel abandon that value, even at the cost of not freeing our prisoner.”

And he’s not alone in the Arab world.

Israel Channel Two television quoted columnist K. al-Ahmed, writing in the al-Qabas newspaper in Kuwait, as saying: “I wish I were Gilad Schalit; I wish my country cared so much about me.”

Syrian blogger Soori Madsoos posted online: “I just envy [the Israeli] government because it cares for its citizens. Our government kills us like animals and our Arab neighbors say it’s just an internal matter.”

Take that, Deborah Orr!

Meanwhile in Gaza, minister Fathi Hamad admitted that Israel’s withdrawal from the Strip enabled Hamas to hide Gilad Shalit for so long.

In an interview with Lebanese daily as-Safir Hamad said that the “military campaign in Gaza abolished any security coordination with Israel and the Strip’s liberation allowed us to conceal Shalit for five years.

 Yet another example of Israel shooting itself in the foot. Allowing Hamas to shoot us in the head.