What is the truth about the arrest of Yahya Sinwar, the leader in the Hamas movement?
A photo was circulated on social media with the text "Arrest of Yahya Sinwar, leader of the Hamas movement."
The truth
The circulated claim is misleading, as the photo is old and was circulated in February 2024, of a person who was arrested by the Israeli army and looks like (Yahya Sinwar), and none of the Palestinian factions or Israeli newspapers reported such news.
The Israeli newspaper (Maariv) also denied the circulated photo and stated that it belongs to a person who looks like Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, and not as claimed in Arab accounts.
Who is Yahya Sinwar?
Yahya Ibrahim Hassan al-Sinwar is a Palestinian politician who was born in the Khan Yunis refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip in 1962. He held several positions in the Student Council at the Islamic University of Gaza. He founded, with Khaled al-Hindi and Rawhi Mushtaha, a security apparatus called the Jihad and Dawa Organization. Israel arrested him several times and issued four life sentences against him for a total of 426 years before he was released in a prisoner exchange deal in 2011. He then returned to his activities in leading the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, and was elected head of the movement in the Gaza Strip in 2017 and again in 2021.