Prisons official: Plot thwarted to kidnap Israeli soldier by Palestinian terrorist

The Prison Service’s chief intelligence officer says a plot by a Palestinian security prisoner to kidnap an Israeli soldier from inside jail has been thwarted.

Yuval Biton tells a conference in Herzliya the kidnapping was planned by Muhammad Naifeh, a commander in Fatah’s Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, who was the mastermind behind deadly terror attack in Kibbutz Metzer in 2002 in which five Israelis were killed.

Naifeh is serving 13 life sentences at the Gilboa prison for planning the massacre.

Biton does not offer any further details of Naifeh’s alleged plot, but says the incident highlights how some Palestinian security prisoners continue to plan abductions from their cells, hoping they will be swapped in a future prisoner exchange, because “they know that no other alternative exists.”