Israeli military forces arrested Palestinian journalist and producer Thaer Fakhoury on October 20, 2023. He was released on June 13, 2024.
Fakhoury is the director of the media production company Space Media, which provides video production services, including to Qatari broadcaster Al-Jazeera. He also provides live footage of events in the West Bank on his Facebook account, which had 74,000 followers at the time of his arrest.
Israeli military forces surrounded Fakhoury´s home in southern Hebron and raided it, according to news reports and a report by the Palestinian press freedom group MADA. Fakhoury´s father told MADA that the journalist and his brother were held in a room and questioned while soldiers searched the house. Soldiers blindfolded and handcuffed Fakhoury, seized his cell phone and his car keys, and took him away in a military jeep parked near his house.
After his release, Fakhoury told CPJ that he was tortured from the moment of his arrest until he arrived at Etzion detention center, where he was held for two days. “There was severe beating during the arrest. From the moment they took me from the house until I reached the detention center, it was a journey of torture,” he said.
Fakhoury said he was later transferred to Ofer Prison, where members of the Nahshon unit responsible for transporting detainees between prisons beat him again and tried to humiliate him through a strip search. He said soldiers left him naked in a room alone, and that one soldier photographed him on a mobile phone.
Fakhoury told CPJ that he was repeatedly beaten in Ofer Prison, and that guards also set police dogs on detainees. During one assault, he said, he was struck in the eye and lost vision in it for 20 days without receiving treatment.
Fakhoury said his court hearings were conducted by video. Israeli intelligence repeatedly told the judge he had a “secret file,” and that his release would pose a threat to Israel’s security. He said his six-month administrative detention order was later reduced to four months, then extended for another four months before he was released.
He said he was only allowed to see his lawyer after three and a half months in detention, during a 10-minute visit conducted by telephone through a glass barrier, while detainees were otherwise completely cut off from the outside world.
Fakhoury said he lost six kilograms (13 pounds) because of prison starvation policies, which he said left detainees with meals that “were not enough even for children.”
Fakhoury’s testimony was included in the CPJ special report, “We returned from hell,” published in February 2026, which compiles accounts from 58 journalists who reported patterns of abuse, torture, and mistreatment against Palestinian journalists inside Israeli prisons.
CPJ also emailed the Israel Prison Service (IPS) regarding the allegations in the report. In response, the IPS said “all prisoners are detained according to the law” and that “all basic rights are fully upheld by professionally trained prison guards.” The service said it was unaware of the claims described, and that to its knowledge “no such events have occurred,” but noted that “prisoners and detainees have the right to file a complaint that will be fully examined and addressed by official authorities.”