‘From the movies’: Sami Hamdi details ‘aggressive’ ICE detention
British journalist Sami Hamdi, who says he was held illegally for more than two weeks by United States immigration authorities for his pro-Palestinian commentary, has described his detention as “like something from the movies”.
In an interview with Al Jazeera, Hamdi accused the US Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) of using “loopholes” to abuse people, and he directed attention towards the plight of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli detention.
The 35-year-old British citizen was stopped at San Francisco International Airport in California on October 26, midway through a speaking tour discussing Israel’s war on Gaza.
Hamdi said he and 20 other men were held in a small cell with no facilities. Inmates repeatedly had their cases delayed through bureaucracy, he said. One Latino man named Antonio whose wife and children are US citizens had been in detention for 10 months without charge, Hamdi said.
“This is the tragedy. You have these people who are illegally detained, who shouldn’t be there longer than six months, according to all habeas corpus rules, but who stay there longer because of bureaucratic loopholes,” said the journalist, who returned to London on Thursday.
ICE agents were “particularly aggressive” and most displayed “little sympathy for the people they were dealing with”, Hamdi said. They appeared to feel that they could act with “impunity”, he continued.
The journalist noted that while his case has received much attention, he believes it is important to remember that thousands of Palestinians remain incarcerated in Israeli military prisons in appalling conditions.
The imperial boomerang in action
While the genocide, displacement and ethnic cleansing in the west bank still goes on
Germany to resume arms exports to Israel from next week
The German government says it will lift an order suspending some weapons sales to Israel from next week, following the ceasefire agreement reached last month.
“The government will, as a general rule, revert to case-by-case reviews in decisions on arms exports and respond to further developments,” a spokesperson said. The decision will allow the resumption of exports suspended in August, from November 24, they continued.
Germany, the second-largest exporter of arms to Israel after the United States, announced a suspension of some arms exports to Israel in August, amid mounting popular pressure over the war in Gaza.
The decision affected weapons and systems that could be used in Gaza but not others deemed necessary for Israel to defend itself from external attacks.
‘Flying Palestinians to South Africa a desperate attempt to depopulate Gaza’
On Thursday morning, 153 Palestinians from Gaza – many without the required travel documents – landed in the South African city of Johannesburg.
It subsequently transpired that their charter flight had been organised by a group called Al-Majd Europe, with investigations alleging that the enterprise is linked to Israel’s Defence Ministry.
Speaking about the development, Marwan Bishara, Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst, said it was “unsurprising” that a few hundred Palestinians had wanted to leave war-torn Gaza, given the level of destruction wrought there by the Israeli military over the past two years.
“What is surprising is the continued Israeli effort to push as many Palestinians as possible outside Gaza,” he said from Paris.
Bishara called it a “desperate attempt” to depopulate Gaza after Israel’s failure to do so during the war. “The idea of pushing Palestinians into the Sinai has failed, the idea of getting [United States President] Trump on board into ethnically cleansing Gaza totally and sending them to African and Asian countries has also failed,” Bishara noted.
