• Most Popular
  • Most Shared

Israel pardons Qantar before prisoner swap

JERUSALEM
Tue Jul 15, 2008 3:25pm EDT

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel formally pardoned Lebanese prisoner Samir Qantar on Tuesday, clearing the way for his release through a prisoner swap deal with Lebanon's Hezbollah group scheduled for Wednesday, an official said.

World

Israeli President Shimon Peres's bureau said in a statement he had "taken this difficult decision" to grant a pardon under the law to the Palestinian serving a life sentence for a lethal 1979 attack, for the sake of freeing two Israeli soldiers captured by Hezbollah guerrillas in 2006.
World


More from Reuters

Photo

Senate on track to pass healthcare bill

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Senate Democrats moved closer on Monday to passing landmark healthcare legislation by Christmas after scoring a win in the first big test vote and gaining the support of a powerful lobbying group for doctors. | Video

» More Top News
A view of a cemetery for foreign prisoners in the settlement of Spassk in central Kazakhstan December 10, 2009. REUTERS/Shamil Zhumatov

Despair in the Kazakh steppe

In icy Kazakhstan, barbed wire and crumbling barracks stand in testament to the decades of cruelty millions of ethnic Germans endured in Soviet gulag camps during Stalin's Great Terror campaign.  Full Article | Slideshow 

World
Two men shake hands in a file photo. REUTERS/File

Let's make a deal

The battered M&A sector will make a tepid recovery in the coming year and three hot sectors will lead the way, according to a Thomson Reuters analysis.  Full Article 

Global Deals Review