Bern (Quds News Network)- Palestinian-American journalist Ali Abunimah has confirmed that Swiss authorities released and deported him after detaining him for three days over his advocacy for Palestinian rights.
Abunimah, the executive director of the Electronic Intifada publication, suggested in a social media post on Monday that Switzerland detained him because of his advocacy for Palestinian rights.
“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,” he wrote.
On Saturday, he was arrested in Zurich before he was set to deliver a speech in the city, sparking outrage from Palestinian rights advocates.
Reuters reported on Sunday that the Swiss police cited an entry ban and other measures under the country’s immigration law as the reason for Abunimah’s arrest.
The Palestinian-American journalist said that when he was questioned by police officers, they accused him of “offending against Swiss law” without providing specific charges.
He said he was “cut off from communication with the outside world, in a cell 24 hours a day”, adding that he was unable to contact his family. He added that he was only given back his phone at the gate of the plane that flew him to Istanbul.
He noted that during the period when he was taken to prison like a “dangerous criminal”, Switzerland welcomed Israeli President Isaac Herzog to the World Economic Forum in Davos.
Herzog has sparked controversy for his stance on Israel’s war on Gaza, which has killed more than 47,300 Palestinians.
“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,” Abunimah said.
“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.”
Abunimah’s detention comes amid a growing crackdown on pro-Palestine voices in the West and Europe during the Gaza war, which UN experts have likened to genocide.
In October 2024, British counterterrorism police raided the home of Abunimah’s Electronic Intifada colleague Asa Winstanley — an incident that the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said was part of a “disturbing pattern of weaponizing counter-terrorism laws against reporters”.
Months earlier, British authorities held journalist Richard Medhurst, who is vocally critical of Israeli policies, for 24 hours as he arrived in London. Medhurst said on Saturday that the “terrorism” investigation against him was extended until May.
