While the Australian government is preparing its campaign against pro Palestinian groups here, Ali Abuminah from the electronic intifada has won his case in Switzerland. Suisse authorities prevented Ali from speaking in public, they arrested him off the street and threw him into administrative detention in Zurich for speaking against Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Here is his account of what happened, Editor WBT 2 February 2026.
Victory! Swiss court rules my detention was illegal, violated Constitution and European Convention on Human Rights. I’m delighted that the Administrative Court of the Canton of Zurich ruled on 19 December 2025 that my arrest and detention by Zurich police last year was unlawful and violated the Swiss constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights.
This decision, received on 5 January, totally vindicates my position that there was no legal basis whatsoever for me to be abducted off the street by plainclothes officers on 25 January 2025, while I was on my way to speak at an event focused on the Israeli genocide in Gaza.
I was thrown in a cell for three days, without being allowed to contact my family or communicate with the outside world, and then forcibly deported.
These illegal actions ensured that I was unable to participate in public or media events aimed at informing people in Switzerland about the genocide in Gaza and the complicity of Swiss institutions in these ongoing crimes.
The court confirmed that Zurich police violated Swiss law and fundamental constitutional guarantees as well as Article 5, Paragraph 2, of the European Convention on Human Rights – because there was no lawful basis for my detention, no lawful order was ever issued for my detention and I was never provided with valid reasons for my imprisonment or information on how long it would last.
The court has ordered the Canton of Zurich to pay my legal costs for this appeal, and in line with Swiss procedure, I intend to apply for compensation for my unlawful and unconstitutional detention. I will donate any compensation I receive to the direct benefit of survivors and victims of the Israeli genocide.
This clear legal victory concerns only one of the appeals I have filed seeking accountability for these unlawful acts – whose wider purpose, I believe, is silencing and deterring any public discussion of Israel’s crimes against the Palestinian people.
I currently have two more appeals pending before Switzerland’s Federal Administrative Court – one against the entry ban imposed after I arrived in the country legally and another against the expulsion order which was subsequently issued.
I have also filed criminal complaints in connection with this matter.
In November, a Swiss parliamentary committee concluded that there was a series of irregularities surrounding my arrest, and evidence of improper interference by Nicoletta della Valle, a senior federal police official with close ties to Israel.
I thank my lawyers for their diligent pursuit of accountability on my behalf. I thank countless people in Switzerland and all over the world for their support, especially all my colleagues at The Electronic Intifada.
Up to this point, my pursuit of accountability has been supported entirely by donations from the public through a crowdfunding campaign, so I want to thank each and every person who contributed to make this important initial victory possible.
In these days of cowardice and complicity by governments in the face of shocking and monstrous crimes, it is more important than ever that citizens everywhere speak out. It is therefore vital that we fight back fiercely when our right to speak is attacked by government repression.
This statement with relevant links on @intifada:
electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abun…
If you wish, you can contribute to legal expenses for the ongoing cases here. Thank you!
gogetfunding.com/journalist-ali…
Ali Abuminah
1 February 2026
—oOo—
25 Jan 2025
I’m free! I wrote this on the plane and I’m posting it just after landing at Istanbul. On Monday evening I was brought to Zurich airport in handcuffs, in a small metal cage inside a windowless prison van and led all the way to the plane by police.
This is after three days and two nights in a Swiss prison cut off from communication with the outside world, in a cell 24 hours a day with one cell mate, not even permitted to contact my family.
On Saturday in a police interview in the presence of my lawyer they accused me of “offending against Swiss law” without ever telling me what crime I had committed in Switzerland or listing any charges. As far as I know I have not been charged with any crime whatsoever and I was held in “administrative detention.”
On Sunday morning, they took me from my cell for questioning by Swiss defense ministry intelligence agents without the presence of my lawyer, and they again refused to allow me to contact her or my family. I refused to talk to them without my lawyer and told them take me back to my cell. During my imprisonment I refused every meal and every cup of coffee or tea they offered me except the last meal, after I knew I would be going home.
I accepted only water, which is the right of every human being. All of this was after I was abducted off the street around 1:30pm on Saturday while on my way to the Palestine teach-in by undercover agents, handcuffed, forced into an unmarked car and sped straight to the prison. 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.
I came to Switzerland at the invitation of Swiss citizens to talk about justice for Palestine, to talk about accountability for a genocide in which Switzerland too is complicit. But while I was hauled off to prison like a dangerous criminal before I even had a chance to say a word, the Israeli president Isaac Herzog, who declared at the start of the genocide that there are no civilians in Gaza, no innocents, received a red carpet welcome in Davos, a carpet soaked in the blood of the more than 47,000 known victims of the genocide and the thousands more still under the rubble, or who died of deliberately inflicted starvation and denial of medical care. And on this very day Netanyahu freely travels to Poland to make a mockery of the Auschwitz commemoration despite an outstanding ICC arrest warrant.
That is the perverse, unjust world we live in. 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.
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. The police gave me my phone back only at the gate of the plane so I’m only seeing now the extent of the overwhelming support and solidarity from all over the world. I’m deeply grateful to each and every person who stood up for me. I’m especially grateful to my lawyer Dina Raewel and her team, to our friends in Zurich who I learned afterwards demonstrated outside the prison, to my family and my colleagues at EI and so many others. I honestly had no idea what was happening outside that concrete room! Thank you from the bottom of my heart.
I want to tell the whole story of what happened, perhaps in an @intifada livestream in the next day or two, because I think it’s important for people to know the depths to which their Western so-called “democracies” have sunk in the abject service of genocidal Zionism. Right now I’m glad to be on my way home. I’m looking forward to hugging my mom and dad, taking a shower and sleeping in my own bed. Journalism is not a crime! Speaking out for Palestine is not a crime! Standing against racist genocidal Zionism is not a crime! Say it with me:
From the River to the Sea Palestine Will Be Free! ❤️🇵🇸✌️
Ali Abuminah
28 January 2025