A baby boy was born last week after his father, a Palestinian prisoner of Israeli’s Golboa prison, smuggled sperm out last year, according to the Palestinian Prisoners’ Affairs Commission.

The head of the Committee, Amjad Abu Assab, said newborn Ali is an ambassador of freedom.
He was born against the will of the oppressors after his father managed to smuggle sperm out from behind prison walls and overcame all the complex security procedures imposed on prisoners by the occupation’s prison administration.

The family of the prisoner, Ahmad Shaheen’s, have expressed their joy with their newest, maverick arrival to the family.

Shaheen was arrested on 22 July 2001, and has served 16 years of a 22 year sentence. His wife gave birth to their child, Omar, a few months after his arrest, and have gone through extraordinary lengths to conceive their second child.

According to the Palestinian Prisoners’ Centre for Studies, to date, 50 children have been born after sperm was smuggled out of Israeli prisons.

“Twenty-three prisoners had attempted to reproduce through the smuggling of sperm by the beginning of 2015, and they had 30 children,” the centre’s spokesperson, Riyad Al-Ashqar, said last week Thursday.

“This number rose at the beginning of 2016 to 28 prisoners who had 38 children. The number rose to reach 39 prisoners who had 50 children.

For Al Ashqar, the number of children concieved through smuggled prison sperm represents a huge moral victory for the Palestinian cause.

"They have overcome all walls, borders and barbed wire, despite the harshness of prison guards, the difficult circumstances and the long years that have passed without freedom,” he said.