Security prisoner Mahmoud Atallah placed in solitary confinement after intel suggested he was planning riot

Prisons chief Kobi Yaakobi ordered Mahmoud Atallah, a Palestinian security prisoner indicted on sexual assault charges, to solitary confinement earlier today.

The top warden gave the orders after receiving intelligence that Atallah was planning on sparking riots in Israel’s security prisons. Female guards broke into Atallah’s cell to take “immediate and severe” preventative action against him.

He is placed in solitary confinement shortly after it was reported that the five women Atallah is accused of sexually assaulting would be compensated millions of shekels by the state, as part of a settlement agreement.

Atallah, who was slated to go free in a January hostage-prisoner exchange, remained behind bars after Yaakobi and National Security Itamar Ben Gvir, who oversees the Prison Service, pressed against his release.

The Gilboa Prison ‘pimping’ affair first surfaced in 2018, after several female soldiers serving as prison guards accused the security inmate of sexually assaulting them. The women were alleged to have been “pimped” out to Atallah by then-prison intelligence officer Rani Basha.

Earlier this month, Yaakobi claimed that the security inmates who remain in Israeli prisons, having largely lost hope of being freed in a hostage-prisoner exchange, may attempt to take matters into their own hands through prison riots or even a mass jailbreak.

Speaking to the Knesset National Security Committee, he warned lawmakers that jails are “on the brink of something happening.”