Ubai Aboudi
WHAT HAPPENED
Ubai Aboudi, a 35-year-old U.S. citizen born and raised in Bloomington, Indiana, was arrested before dawn on November 13, 2019, when about a dozen Israeli soldiers raided his family home in Kafr Aqab, on the northern edge of Jerusalem in the occupied West Bank, and confiscated his U.S. passport. Aboudi, executive director of the Ramallah-based Bisan Center for Research and Development, was placed in administrative detention — imprisonment without charge or trial — under a four-month order issued by the Israeli military commander of the West Bank. Amnesty International issued an Urgent Action condemning his detention, and scholars including Noam Chomsky campaigned for his release. His case was later transferred to the Israeli military court at Ofer, which on June 2, 2020 sentenced him to 12 months in prison and a 2,500-shekel fine. He was released in 2020.
TESTIMONY
“It's a crime that the Israeli military would pull a gentle soul like Ubai out of his home in front of his family in the middle of the night.” — Noam Chomsky, MIT linguist and scholar
SOURCES
DEMAND ACCOUNTABILITY FOR
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