Journalist arrested and held for two days during visit to give talk
Electronic Intifada director Ali Abunimah has been deported by Switzerland today after being arrested and detained for two days – after Swiss border police had interviewed him and allowed him to enter for an event talk he was scheduled to give.
Abunimah, who refused food during his detention, said that he was “cut off from communication with the outside world”, including his family, and that Swiss police had accused him of “offending against Swiss law” but presented no charges – and that he had been questions “by Swiss defense ministry intelligence agents without the presence of my lawyer, and they again refused to allow me to contact her or my family.”
In a statement on his arrival in Istanbul, Abunimah issued a statement about his ordeal:
I’m free! I wrote this on the plane and I’m posting it just after landing at Istanbul. On Monday evening I was brought to Zurich airport in handcuffs, in a small metal cage inside a windowless prison van and led all the way to the plane by police. This is after three days and two nights in a Swiss prison cut off from communication with the outside world, in a cell 24 hours a day with one cell mate, not even permitted to contact my family.
On Saturday in a police interview in the presence of my lawyer they accused me of “offending against Swiss law” without ever telling me what crime I had committed in Switzerland or listing any charges. As far as I know I have not been charged with any crime whatsoever and I was held in “administrative detention.”
On Sunday morning, they took me from my cell for questioning by Swiss defense ministry intelligence agents without the presence of my lawyer, and they again refused to allow me to contact her or my family. I refused to talk to them without my lawyer and told them take me back to my cell. During my imprisonment I refused every meal and every cup of coffee or tea they offered me except the last meal, after I knew I would be going home. I accepted only water, which is the right of every human being.
All of this was after I was abducted off the street around 1:30pm on Saturday while on my way to the Palestine teach-in by undercover agents, handcuffed, forced into an unmarked car and sped straight to the prison. My “crime”? Being a journalist who speaks up for Palestine and against Israel’s genocide and settler-colonial savagery and those who aid and abet it. I came to Switzerland at the invitation of Swiss citizens to talk about justice for Palestine, to talk about accountability for a genocide in which Switzerland too is complicit.
But while I was hauled off to prison like a dangerous criminal before I even had a chance to say a word, the Israeli president Isaac Herzog, who declared at the start of the genocide that there are no civilians in Gaza, no innocents, received a red carpet welcome in Davos, a carpet soaked in the blood of the more than 47,000 known victims of the genocide and the thousands more still under the rubble, or who died of deliberately inflicted starvation and denial of medical care.
And on this very day Netanyahu freely travels to Poland to make a mockery of the Auschwitz commemoration despite an outstanding ICC arrest warrant. That is the perverse, unjust world we live in. This ordeal lasted three days but that taste of prison was more than enough to leave me in even greater awe of the Palestinian heroes who endure months and years in the prisons of the genocidal oppressor.
More than ever I know that the debt we owe them is one we can never repay and all of them must be free and they must remain our focus. The police gave me my phone back only at the gate of the plane so I’m only seeing now the extent of the overwhelming support and solidarity from all over the world.
I’m deeply grateful to each and every person who stood up for me. I’m especially grateful to my lawyer Dina Raewel and her team, to our friends in Zurich who I learned afterwards demonstrated outside the prison, to my family and my colleagues at EI and so many others. I honestly had no idea what was happening outside that concrete room! Thank you from the bottom of my heart.
I want to tell the whole story of what happened, perhaps in an Electronic Intifada livestream in the next day or two, because I think it’s important for people to know the depths to which their Western so-called “democracies” have sunk in the abject service of genocidal Zionism. Right now I’m glad to be on my way home. I’m looking forward to hugging my mom and dad, taking a shower and sleeping in my own bed. Journalism is not a crime! Speaking out for Palestine is not a crime! Standing against racist genocidal Zionism is not a crime!
Say it with me: From the River to the Sea Palestine Will Be Free!
Switzerland’s tactics mirror the UK Starmer regime’s war on journalists who expose Israel’s genocide and war crimes in Gaza and the lies it has told to justify those crimes – the UK state has abused anti-terror laws to harass, raid and persecute a series of journalists, including Abunimah’s colleague Asa Winstanley – and has charged two of them, as well as imprisoning a number of young anti-genocide activists for more than a year before trial as it ‘makes the process the punishment’ in an attempt to deter others from showing solidarity with Palestinians facing racism and extermination at the hands of Israel and its colluding allies. Abunimah’s arrest has been condemned by UN human rights experts and human rights groups.
Solidarity with Ali Abunimah and all those fighting for justice, human rights and self-determination for the Palestinian people and all those oppressed under imperialism.
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Wow !!
Powerful and inspiring words from a very courageous and principled comrade in the struggle.
Viva Palestina !
AS a teenager in the sixties, I look back at how (comparatively) free we were in those days, and how since then we have become less and less so, until we now have a control-freak as PM. A man who cannot tolerate ANYONE having a view that is even slightly different to his own. And yet, he is far from the only one across the world. The world has become rotten. Support for a genocidal regime is almost 100% across countries that only pretend they are democracies. If our so-called leaders, cannot see how wrong it is to offer Israel ANY support in murdering tens of thousands, but make a trip to “remember” similar suffering where folk use the phrase “People did nothing” it defies the most basic logic possible. It lacks humanity. It demonstrates the iron grip of the world’s elite on the smaller people.
Starmer had a breakfast meeting today with “business leaders.” It seems that whilst most of us can talk to anyone in the street, shops, pubs, restaurants, workplace, Starmer only wants to talk to business “leaders|” and the rich. HE seems totally incapable of speaking to random members of the public. There is no wonder why he finds it impossible to understand the struggles of ordinary folk, when he can’t even say “Hello,” to them, and only condescends to lecture them about how much more they should work, for low wages, and keep their opinions about the destruction of lives, communities and property in Gaza to themselves. Better to chat to the rich. Or to billionaire newspaper proprietors. How the hell have we sunk so low?
He does indeed seem totally incapable of relating or speaking to members of the public. I realise she was not just a ‘random member of the public’ but I shall never forget his shameful reaction when a justly irate Audrey White tackled him. If memory serves he didn’t even speak to her or look her in the eye and she was swiftly moved away by one of his aides.
So much for Swiss neutrality.
As for keef , it obviously comes as a shock to him that the proles even have the power of speech. When Audrey White fronted the aloof, holier-than-thou gobshite that he is, he said sod-all because he needed a translator.
And sat next to keef was Rotherham – simpering bootlick that he is – who also kept schtum because he’s another gutless yes-man.