Sobbing, Israeli-Arab poet and journalist Mr Yusef Samir thanked God today for his freedom after being held captive for two months by Palestinian security forces in the West Bank town of Bethlehem.
Mr Samir, who disappeared during a visit to Bethlehem with his Palestinian wife on April 4th, fled from the Palestinian-ruled town before midnight yesterday, running with his hands bound into the arms of Israeli soldiers manning a checkpoint.
"I kissed the floor beneath the soldiers' feet," Mr Samir, 63, told reporters from a hospital bed in Jerusalem. "I stayed over there 64 days without light, no air. Nothing."
Palestinian intelligence chief Mr Tawfiq al-Tirawi did not deny Mr Samir had been in detention but accused the Egyptian-born writer of collaborating with Israel's intelligence service .
"His new allegations and lies are not true," Mr Tirawi said in a statement.
Israel granted Mr Samir political asylum in 1968 after he was released from a prison in Egypt where he had been held for participating in a student revolt and voicing criticism against then-Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser's regime.
Mr Samir, who suffers from a heart condition, rolled up the trousers of his hospital pyjamas to show reporters bruises covering his legs.
"Every day they beat me, you can see," he said, with eyes red from crying and lack of sleep.
"They said to me ‘if you don't die from your heart then I have a bullet in my gun and I will kill you with this. It (killing you) will only cost three shekels.’"
Mr Samir said the Palestinians who captured him accused him of spying for Israel and tried to make him sign a statement to that effect, once by pointing a gun at his head.