Pressmediaofindia
Related Articles
01-05-2025
JERUSALEM/ WEST BANK: The Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate has condemned the arrest of a prominent local journalist by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank.
Ali al-Samoudi, who has worked extensively with Western media was detained during a raid on his son’s home in the northern city of Jenin early on Tuesday.
The 58-year-old was interrogated for half an hour at an unknown location and was later transferred to an Israeli hospital due to a deterioration in his health, his son Mohammed said.
The Israeli military said Samoudi was “identified with the (Palestinian) Islamic Jihad terrorist organization” and “suspected in the transfer of funds” to it, without giving any evidence.
His family strongly denied his involvement and said that in his long career he had never previously faced such an accusation.
They said Israeli authorities had not told them the name of the hospital where he was being treated or any other details.
He is expected to be brought before a military court next Tuesday.
The Israeli military separately announced on Tuesday that security forces had detained a total of 24 wanted individuals “involved in the transfer of funds to terrorist organizations” including three from Jenin, during raids across the West Bank.
In May 2022, Samoudi was working with the Palestinian-American Al Jazeera correspondent Shireen Abu Aqla when she was shot dead by an Israeli sniper at the entrance to Jenin refugee camp. He was shot and wounded in the back.
According to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), Israeli forces have arrested at least 79 journalists in the West Bank and Gaza since the start of the Gaza war in October 2023, while Palestinian authorities have arrested five others.
Another 176 journalists, almost all of them Palestinian, have been killed in Gaza, the West Bank, Israel and Lebanon during the war, the organization says.
In 2022, the Al Jazeera network had submitted a case against Israeli forces at the International Criminal Court (ICC) over the killing of Shireen Abu Aqla.
The Palestinian-American journalist was shot in the head during an Israeli army raid in the occupied West Bank in May.
The Israeli military concluded that one of its soldiers probably killed her, but called her death unintentional.
Al Jazeera said that was completely unfounded and that its evidence showed it was a “deliberate killing”.
Outgoing Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid said; “no-one will investigate (Israel Defense Forces) soldiers and no-one will preach to us about morals in warfare, certainly not Al Jazeera.”
Israel does not recognize the ICC’s authority and has refused to co-operate with an investigation by the Hague-based court’s prosecutor into possible war crimes in the occupied territories.
Shireen Abu Aqla, who was 51, went to the Jenin refugee camp on 11 May to report for Al Jazeera’s Arabic TV channel on an Israeli raid which had seen gun battles break out between soldiers and Palestinian militants.
She was wearing a helmet and blue flak jacket marked with the word “press” when she was killed while walking along a road with other journalists, one of whom was also shot and wounded.
Journalists, bystanders and Palestinian officials said the gunfire came from Israeli troops stationed about 200m (656ft) away allegations which was later backed by investigations by the UN and multiple media organizations. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
