Political interference led to Ali Abunimah’s arbitrary detention and deportation: we demand accountability!

Journalist Ali Abunimah’s brutal arrest in Zurich late January sparked outrage the world over: as the news spread, activists and rights experts condemned Swiss authorities’ abuse. He was deported on January 27th on the basis of an invalid entry ban.

It is now known that federal authorities initially rejected the request for an entry ban after its legal assessment, but were pressured by Zurich cantonal authorities to revise their decision and finally issue the ban notwithstanding. Support Ali’s crowdfunding campaign for legal action against this injustice here.

Ali’s deportation

After having been taken into custody on January 25th by unidentified agents, belonging to the Swiss Federal Intelligence Services or Federal Police, Ali Abunimah was kept for 3 days and 2 nights in a Zurich detention facility, until he was escorted by police onto his flight out of the country on the evening of January 27th. During that time, he had access to legal counsel when he was first interrogated on the day of his arrest. However, federal agents tried to interrogate him again at a later stage of his detention, without informing his lawyer, thus denying him access to legal counsel, in violation of his rights under Swiss Law.

He was treated like a criminal suspect, even though no charges were pressed against him and he had not committed any offence under Swiss Law. Out of principle, Ali says he refused food until he knew he would be released: watch his full testimony in an interview by Electronic Intifada here.

Several UN Special Rapporteurs and UN experts demanded his release and severely criticised Swiss authorities for these violations of free speech and the criminalisation of activists and journalists who advocate for the rights of Palestinian people.

The petition to Swiss authorities that we launched during his detention gained more than 20’000 signatures by Tuesday, 28th January. We demanded his release, an investigation into the faulty procedure leading to his arbitrary detention and accountability for the violations of Ali’s rights. We are following it up with the responsible authorities and will keep you updated on our progress.

Legal Context

The Swiss authorities acted on the basis of an entry ban that the Federal Police Fedpol issued against Ali Abunimah on Friday 24th January 2025, after he had already entered Swiss territory. The ban was therefore not applicable to Ali, and anyone subjected to an entry ban cannot be held liable for it when they legally entered the country before it was issued. Swiss legal practice and case law are also clear on this point: Ali could not be arrested on the basis of an entry ban that was issued once he had already entered Swiss territory. Ali’s arrest and detention on the basis of such a ban were therefore in violation of Swiss law, i.e. illegal.

Further, the issuance of such bans falls under the scope of the Swiss Federal Act on Foreign Nationals and Integration, and was, in Ali’s case, based on the following exceptional grounds:

• the foreign national represents a threat to public security and order in Switzerland.

In practice, a ban on these grounds is issued for: terrorism, violent extremism, organised crime, terrorism, or espionage. The authorities would therefore have had to possess sufficient evidence to suspect that Ali might be involved in such activities to justify him posing a threat to Swiss national security, which is not the case. The ban was solely issued on preposterous fabrications based on Ali’s tweets and other public statements: protected expressions of his opinions, in line with the defamatory and baseless accusations of antisemitism published by a local newspaper and repeated by Zurich’s security department.

Considering the strict legal requirements to follow when a person’s fundamental rights are concerned, such as by banning them from Swiss territory, the lack of professionalism demonstrated by the Federal Police in its evident failure to consider the case properly is shocking. This lack of rigour and of objectivity in its decision-making is outrageous.

Finally, it has now been confirmed that the police and the security department of the canton of Zurich that had requested the travel ban applied considerable pressure on the federal authorities to issue it. On Thursday 23rd January, the Federal Police as well as the State Secretariat for Migration rejected the Zurich police’s request for an entry ban against Ali. On Friday, the Zurich cantonal police insisted that the FedPol issue the ban, entirely disregarding the legal assessment concluding Ali Abunimah did not represent a threat to Swiss national security, and somehow applied sufficient pressure for the Federal Police to issue the travel ban that same evening - after Abunimah had been allowed to enter the country earlier that same day.

Why the cantonal authorities were so adamant to prevent Ali Abunimah from staying and speaking in Zurich does not seem justifiable from a legal, objective point of view. Ali’s lawyers are pursuing this case, appealing the faulty decisions and demanding they be rectified. A crowdfunding campaign to cover the legal costs to fight this was launched by Ali last week.

An independent investigation into all of the procedural steps and parties involved in this abuse of power that lead to the violation of Abunimah’s rights is urgent, in order to hold the responsible parties accountable and prevent such abuses from happening again.

This incident is a stain on Switzerland’s record in upholding its own constitution, and in upholding human rights and international law treaties.

Statement on the X platform (Twitter) published by former UN Human Rights Director Craig Mokhiber:

“Now we must work for accountability for the perpetrators responsible for this gross violation of Ali’s human rights. Any Swiss officials involved must be duly investigated and held accountable under the rule of law. Switzerland should publicly apologize, compensate Ali, and make public the findings of the investigation and all steps being taken to ensure that this does not happen again to Ali or to other journalists, human rights defenders, or targeted minorities.”