JERUSALEM, Sept 13 (AFP) - Five young Israelis who were jailed in January for refusing to serve in the army as a protest against the occupation of the Palestinian territories are to be released, the mother of one of the group said Monday.
"We have been informed by a lawyer from the chief of staff's office that Hagai (Matar) and the other four will be released on Wednesday for good conduct," Anat Matar told AFP.
Hagai, Matan Kamitzer and Noam Bahat would be freed from Maasihyahou prison, to the south of Tel Aviv, while Shimri Tsamert and Adam Maor were being released from the northern Hermon prison.
The five were sentenced on January 4 by a military court in Jaffa, near Tel Aviv, after the judges ruled their refusal to serve in the army on grounds of conscience was "politically motivated".
They had already been on remand for a year, serving three months behind bars and another nine months in an open prison.
Unlike the others in Israel's growing refusenik movement, the five refused to serve in the Israel Defence Forces in any sphere, not just in the occupied Palestinian territories, on grounds of conscience.
But the prosecution rejected their position as "selective objection" rather than "conscientious objection." It said their objection was not against serving in any army, but only in one specific one -- the IDF -- on account of its activities in the territories.