British political commentator and journalist Sami Hamdi has been detained by federal authorities in the United States in what a US Muslim civil rights group has called an “abduction”.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) condemned Hamdi’s detention at San Francisco airport on Sunday as “a blatant affront to free speech”, attributing his arrest to his criticism of Israel’s war on Gaza.
Hamdi, a frequent critic of US and Israeli policy, had addressed a CAIR gala in Sacramento on Saturday evening and was due to speak at another CAIR event in Florida the next day before his detention by the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency.
CAIR said he was stopped at the airport following a coordinated “far-right, Israel First campaign”.
“Our nation must stop abducting critics of the Israeli government at the behest of unhinged Israel First bigots,” it said in a statement. “This is an Israel First policy, not an America First policy, and it must end.”
In a statement seen by media, friends of Hamdi called his arrest “a deeply troubling precedent for freedom of expression and the safety of British citizens abroad”.
The statement called for the United Kingdom Foreign Office to “demand urgent clarification from the US authorities regarding the grounds for Mr Hamdi’s detention”.
media was told that he remains in US custody and has not been deported.
“The detention of a British citizen for expressing political opinions sets a dangerous precedent that no democracy should tolerate,” the statement added.
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