Guardian calls terrorist with blood on his hands a 'political prisoner'

A Guardian theatre review by Arifa Akbar (“Tomorrow Will Be a Palestinian Day review – work that finds a way out of Gaza’s ruins”, June 2) included the following:

Directed by Ahmed Masoud and Micaela Miranda, the show has been rapidly put out with just one week of rehearsals. Four writers are currently in Gaza while two are former political prisoners, including Walid Daqqa, one of the longest-serving Palestinian prisoners, who died in custody in 2024.

The term “political prisoner” is widely defined in major dictionaries as those put in prison for criticizing the government, and was codified in 2012 by the EU Parliamentary Assembly as follows:

a. if the detention has been imposed in violation of one of the fundamental guarantees set out in the European Convention on Human Rights and its Protocols (ECHR), in particular freedom of thought, conscience and religion, freedom of expression and information, freedom of assembly and association;

b. if the detention has been imposed for purely political reasons without connection to any offence;

Walid Daqqa, who died of cancer in 2024, was convicted in 1986 for commanding a terrorist cell of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) to abduct, torture and murder an Israeli soldier, Moshe Tamam, in 1985. Tamam’s killers reportedly gouged out his eyes, mutilated his body and castrated him before taking him to an olive grove and shooting him dead.

In fact, not even Amnesty International, who campaigned against his alleged mistreatment in prison, referred to him as a “political prisoner”.

We complained to Guardian editors several days ago asking them to remove the term “political prisoners” from the article, but we haven’t received a reply.

Back in 2013, we prompted two Guardian corrections on this same issue.