Human Rights Glance
A 16-year-old American citizen was freed on Thursday after spending nine months in an Israeli prison.
Mohammed Ibrahim, a Palestinian-American teenager from Florida whose case was first exposed by the Guardian in July, was released following a guilty plea and suspended sentence, according to his family. Relatives said he was taken to a hospital for intravenous therapy and blood work immediately after his release, and noted he is severely underweight, pale and is still suffering from scabies contracted during his detention. Ibrahim had lost a quarter of his body weight in detention, his family said.
“Words can’t describe the immense relief we have as a family right now, to have Mohammed in his parents’ arms,” Zeyad Kadur, a close family friend, wrote in a statement, adding the family “has been living a horrific and endless nightmare” over the last nine months.
“Israeli soldiers had no right to take Mohammed from us in the first place,” he said.
Ibrahim was arrested in a raid on his family’s West Bank home in February when he was still 15 years old, with Israeli forces allegedly blindfolding and handcuffing him in the middle of the night. He was charged with two counts of throwing objects at moving vehicles, according to court documents reviewed by the Guardian.
The case first gained attention after 20-year-old American-Palestinian Sayfollah Musallet was allegedly beaten to death by Israeli settlers in mid-July. While reporting on his story, the Guardian learned that his younger cousin Mohammed Ibrahim had been held since February. No arrests have been made in Musallet’s killing, though Mike Huckabee, the US ambassador, called it a “criminal and terrorist act” and demanded Israel “aggressively investigate the murder”.
In the occupied West Bank, much like in the Gaza Strip, Israeli policy is forcing thousands of Palestinians from their homes, in stark defiance of international law.
Ten-year-old Rateb Abu Qleiq sat in a rusted chair in front of his tent in Deir al-Balah. As he spoke, he unconsciously swung his right leg, which was amputated just below the knee, back and forth—the stub tracing a short arc in the air. On his lap he cradled a makeshift prosthetic, nothing more than a piece of plastic sewage pipe outfitted with an orange covering secured by a piece of string.
Viola Ford Fletcher, who as one of the last survivors of the 1921 Tulsa race massacre in Oklahoma spent her later years seeking justice for the deadly attack by a white mob on the thriving Black community where she lived as a child, has died. She was 111.
Donald Trump said on Friday night that he’s “immediately” terminating temporary legal protections for Somali migrants living in Minnesota, further targeting a program seeking to limit deportations that his administration has already repeatedly sought to weaken.
The declaration of a ceasefire in Gaza in October brought initial relief to its inhabitants. Yet officials there said Israeli strikes killed 33 people, including 12 children, on Wednesday; Israel said its troops had come under fire. Another five Palestinians were killed on Thursday. Hundreds have died since the ceasefire was declared. Even if the shelling stops, the destruction of Palestinian life will carry on as Israel continues to throttle aid, and the consequences of two years of war unfold.
