Imprisoned Palestinian Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti was wounded and left bleeding after an Israeli prison guard shot him in the leg with a rubber bullet at close range, his family said on Monday.
Barghouti had informed his lawyer of the violent incident during a visit on Thursday, Abdul Qader Badawi, media officer for the Popular Campaign for the Freedom of Marwan Barghouti and All Prisoners, told The New Arab.
Barghouti's cell door was opened suddenly four days before the visit, when a prison guard fired a rubber bullet at his leg from point-blank range, causing severe bleeding, Badawi said.
He received no treatment following the injury and was left without medical care for four to five days, Badawi said.
Arab Barghouti, Marwan Barghouti's son, told TNA that the attack was part of a long-running campaign aimed at breaking his father's resolve and ultimately killing him inside his prison cell.
Fadwa Barghouti, the jailed leader's wife and a lawyer, also confirmed that a prison guard had fired a rubber bullet at her husband's leg, causing a painful injury and bleeding.
She described the incident as the latest in a series of ongoing assaults against him.
The Israeli Prison Service had also issued an inflammatory report against her husband as an international campaign calling for his release continues to grow, she added.
The campaign, held under the slogan "Freedom for Marwan, Freedom for Palestine", has attracted the support of international figures and political leaders, as well as growing public and official backing worldwide.
After 25 years in Israeli prisons, Barghouti still holds on to his belief that freedom was an alienable right and that the Israeli occupation would eventually end, his wife added.
She argued that the Israeli report, despite seeking to condemn him, acknowledged his influence, political standing and symbolism, as well as the scale of the international campaign demanding his release.
Earlier this month, Barghouti's office said Israeli authorities had further tightened the conditions of his solitary confinement.
The Fatah Central Committee member has been held in isolation since November 2023 and has been repeatedly transferred between solitary confinement wings in several prisons.
His office said the Israeli Prison Service had recently imposed harsher conditions on him in the isolation section of Ganot Prison, describing the move as part of a series of systematic and arbitrary measures targeting him since the start of Israel's genocide in Gaza.