Israeli forces arrested Amin Baraka, a 36-year-old writer for the Qatari-based broadcaster Al Jazeera, at a checkpoint in Al-Mawasi, west of Khan Yunis in southern Gaza, on January 25, 2024, the journalist told CPJ after his release.
Baraka’s wife and three children had been injured earlier in the war by Israeli shelling, and they were living in a school for displaced people in the area, the journalist told CPJ in March 2025.
From January 21 to 25, while Baraka was on a break from work to visit his family, the school was surrounded by tanks, so they fled south towards Rafah, through what had been designated a safe corridor, Baraka said.
“I found myself detained after they learned I was a journalist. They severely beat me and forced me to strip naked. One of the soldiers who participated in the beating even spoke to me in English, saying, ‘Welcome to hell,'” he told CPJ. “Hell actually involved being abused and beaten all over my body, focusing on my testicles and stomach.”
Baraka said he was held in Israel’s Gaza envelope detention centers, Jerusalem’s Al-Moscobiyeh interrogation center, the West Bank’s Ofer Prison, and Ktzi’ot Prison in southern Israel’s Negev desert.
Baraka said he experienced “the most horrific methods of physical and psychological torture,” including long periods in blindfolds, handcuffs, shackles, stress positions, and lengthy interrogations, without protection against the cold desert nights.
“In every prison they transferred me to, I was subjected to physical abuse. I still suffer from the blows to my stomach…and I need surgery,” he said.
“They interrogated me about my work for Al Jazeera, accusing Al Jazeera staff, from the lowest-ranking employee to the highest-ranking, of belonging to Hamas. An Israeli soldier also told me, literally, in Arabic, ‘Al Jazeera correspondent Wael al-Dahdouh defied us and remained in the Gaza Strip, so we killed his family. We will kill your family, too,’” he said.
The food was “in quantities unfit even for children, amounting to one-third of what an average person needs,” he said, adding that his weight fell from 83 to 57 kilograms (183 to 126 pounds).
Baraka said that before his release, a Shin Bet intelligence officer warned him “not to approach or interact with any Palestinian political parties or participate in any demonstrations” and to leave Gaza with his family.
Baraka was released on February 15, 2025, in a prisoner hostage exchange between Israel and Hamas.
Baraka did not appear on CPJ’s 2024 prison census because CPJ was not aware of his case until his release.