On September 19, 2024, Israeli security forces arrested Palestinian freelance journalist Mujahed al-Saadi, who contributes to the pan-Arab newspaper Al-Araby al-Jadeed and the local broadcaster Palestine Today TV, during the night at his home in the northern West Bank city of Jenin, according to news reports.
Al-Saadi’s brother, Amjad al-Saadi, told the Beirut-based press freedom group SKeyes that the soldiers broke into his brother’s home, assaulted and beat him, and arrested him in his pajamas.
“They didn’t allow him to change his clothes or put on his shoes and they seized his cell phones,” he said.
Al-Saadi was placed in administrative detention for six months on September 30, according to his brother Ibrahim al-Saadi, who spoke with CPJ via messaging app on October 25, 2024. He added that al-Saadi was being held in Megiddo prison. Under administrative detention procedures, authorities may hold detainees for six months without charge if they suspect the detainee of planning to commit a future offense, and then extend the detention an unlimited number of times, according to the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem. Judges may accept evidence against the detainee without disclosing it on security grounds.
Al-Saadi was arrested in the course of Israel’s recent military operations in the region, which began after the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel. Israel has killed scores of journalists in Gaza as well as six in Lebanon, jailed dozens of Palestinian journalists from the West Bank and Gaza, and destroyed much of the press infrastructure in Gaza, all while preventing the foreign press from entering Gaza.
CPJ emailed the Israeli Defense Forces, Israel Security Agency, also known as Shin Bet, and the Israeli Prison Service in late 2024 for comment on the cases of imprisoned Palestinian journalists but received no response.