Ahmed Daqamseh, a Jordanian soldier who shot 7 Israeli 8th grade school girls in 1997 at a border crossing was released from prison Sunday.

Jordan found the Daqamseh mentally unstable and sentenced to him to life in prison instead of giving him the death penalty, despite his anti-Israel statement. “Don’t believe the lie of normalization with the Zionist entity. Don’t believe the lie of the two-state solution; Palestine united is from the ocean to the river … there is no state called ‘Israel,” he told Jordanian media in an interview after his release.

Some Jordanians interviewed by the Washington Post said they thought Daqamseh was unjustly held for so long. “Israelis kill Palestinians by the hundreds every month, and no one is brought to justice. Why do we punish a soldier,” a shopkeeper said.

“It is not logic. It is feeling — a sense of revenge, a kind of compensation, a way of dealing with Israelis the same way they deal with Palestinians — killing them outside the law without being punished,” another Palestinian activist said.

Israel’s government summoned the Jordanian Ambassador in 2011 after the King’s justice department considered letting Daqamseh released earlier than 20 years. Jordan’s justice system stipulates that prisoners sentenced to life can be released after a period of 20 years.

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