Israel Repatriates Last Prisoners

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31584, 23 January 1968, Page 12

Israel Repatriates Last Prisoners

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Coppripht) ATLIT (Israel), January 22. Several hundred Egyptian prisoners, clad in thick Army uniforms but shivering in icy rain, lined up in the bleak, windswept prison camp at Atlit, in central Israel, last night for their last roll-call before freedom.

They stood quietly in rows as Israeli guards counted them on to 19 buses which were to drive them through the night to the Suez Canal, 275 miles away, across the sands where they were captured by Israeli forces in the war of last June. Some laughed at the thought of home. Some were bewildered. Others were still sullen. They were almost the last of the Arab prisoners held in Israel. Since January 12, about 4500 Egyptians have been sent home, and the remaining few go tomorrow. Atlit camp, now silent and desolate, will be closed tomorrow. In the last 25 years it has held Italians, illegal Jewish immigrants, Israeli underground fighters and Egyptian prisoners from three wars. For some of the Egyptians captured in June it was their second time behind the Atlit wire in 11 years. The camp commandant, Lieutenant - Colonel Zeev

Bashan, seated at a desk adorned by two small statuettes of an ancient Pharoah carved by the prisoners, said: “Some of them are going back to an uncertain future. Some will be court-martialled, I’m sure. “Maybe Cairo fears the others will tell what really happened in the war.”