Calls Grow for Release of US Citizen Detained Without Charge in Israel

The Israeli military arrested 20-year-old U.S. citizen Sama Safi at her family’s home in Ramallah on June 2. She has been held in military detention for the last three weeks without charge.

This is not the first high-profile case of the Israeli military detaining a U.S. citizen without charge since October 7, 2023.

Mohammed Ibrahim, 15, was held in Israeli military detention for more than nine months on the accusation of throwing stones at Israeli vehicles. He turned 16 behind bars and faced up to 20 years in prison if convicted, but he was released in late November of last year after a concerted pressure campaign in the U.S. calling for his release.

Safi’s lawyer, Lea Tsemel, also represented Ibrahim. She gained prominence over five decades of representing Palestinians in Israeli courts, including clients accused of attacks on Israelis. In 1996, she received France’s highest human rights award, shared with Palestinian lawyer Raji Sourani.

According to Tsemel, Safi is currently being held as a security detainee at the Ofer military prison in the occupied West Bank.

“Physically, she’s okay, very thin. They get very little to eat, of course, because she’s considered a security prisoner,” Tsemel said.

As of June 2026, Israel was holding 3,324 Palestinians in administrative detention — imprisonment without charge or trial — among roughly 9,000 Palestinians held as “security” prisoners overall, according to the Israeli rights group HaMoked. The group describes the total as one of the highest figures in decades.

Palestinians living in the occupied West Bank are subject to Israeli military law, while Israelis living in settlements, which the International Court of Justice has held to be illegal under international law, are subject to Israeli civil law.

Robert McCaw, national government affairs department director at the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), said, “Immediately, [U.S. Ambassador to Israel] Mike Huckabee should be saying either press charges or release this American citizen now. It’s one sentence. It can happen quickly. He has not demonstrated the moral courage to do so.”

The Israeli military and Israeli Prison Service did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Security prisoners in Israel have faced brutal conditions, especially since October 7, under Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir, who oversees the prison system and has publicly boasted of making conditions harsher for Palestinian security prisoners.

This is reflected in Tsemel’s assessment of Safi’s treatment: “When she’s brought to us, she has to bend her body, bend her head … To walk with her head down, not to lift it, with a hand behind the head or behind the back, in handcuffs. These are the rules.”

Safi, who suffers from familial Mediterranean fever and receives treatment in Italy, could see her symptoms worsen while she is held in prison. According to Tsemel, who can visit her every other day, Safi has been receiving her medication but may be prevented from attending an upcoming appointment in Italy. “They might not be able to treat her here; it’s a conversation with the judge,” Tsemel said.

CAIR, which spearheaded much of the U.S. lobbying campaign for Mohammed Ibrahim’s release — an effort that produced a letter signed by more than 100 human rights, civil rights, and faith-based organizations calling on the U.S. to intervene on Ibrahim’s behalf — has also been leading efforts in Congress to pressure the Israeli government to either charge Safi or release her.

The U.S. government’s official policy for citizens detained abroad is to provide consular assistance, but not to secure their release or intervene in another country’s courts. The more aggressive “wrongful detention” track, which tasks a special presidential envoy with negotiating a citizen’s freedom, requires a formal designation by the secretary of state that has not been applied in Safi’s case. The State Department could not be reached for comment, but according to Tsemel, Safi was visited by a consular representative after she was detained and attended her first hearing.

McCaw also called on the U.S. to invoke the U.S.-Israel Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty, in force since 1999, which he said the government could use to secure evidence and compel Israeli cooperation regarding the basis for Safi’s detention.

Safi spent most of her childhood in the West Bank. Much of her family, however, lives in Florida. After they learned of her arrest by the Israeli military, some of her aunts and uncles flew to be closer to family in Ramallah. So far, Safi’s family has been denied permission to visit her while she is in detention.

Brad Parker, associate director of policy and a staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, told Truthout, “If you are a Palestinian prisoner, being a U.S. citizen means very little to Israeli authorities. The discriminatory Israeli military law and military court system act as a tool to control the Palestinian population living under Israeli military occupation more than anything else.”

While he was held at Megiddo Prison, Ibrahim witnessed the death of fellow child detainee Walid Ahmad, which he described to CAIR-Florida upon his release. Ahmad, who was 17, died after what rights groups described as prolonged starvation and medical neglect. An autopsy conducted by Israeli experts found he had suffered “extreme, likely prolonged malnutrition.”

In Congress, at least five representatives and senators have called on the Israeli government to either charge or release Safi.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen, whose public stance on Israel has shifted since October 7, and who has become one of the Senate’s more outspoken critics of the U.S.-Israel relationship, was one of the first members of Congress to call on the Israeli government to release her. In a statement posted to his X account, he said, “I am really sick and tired of the Israeli government — the Netanyahu government — taking American taxpayer dollars and then mistreating Americans. America must secure her release NOW.”

Representatives Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib, and Senators Peter Welch and Jeff Merkley, who were also involved in the efforts to free Ibrahim, publicly called for Safi’s release as well.

“Having a U.S. passport as a Palestinian does very little to change your plight,” McCaw explained. Safi and Ibrahim are not the only U.S. citizens to have been arrested by the Israeli military since October 7, and Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, a U.S.-Turkish citizen, was killed by Israeli forces while attending a demonstration against settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank in September 2024.

According to Tsemel, Safi’s spirits remain high despite the harsh conditions of detention. Outside human rights observers, including the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem, have described Israel’s prison system since October 7 as a “network” of “torture camps.”

Safi is being held with the three other Birzeit University students she was arrested with on June 2. Birzeit University, the largest university in the West Bank, has long been a site of Israeli military activity. Tsemel told Truthout it was not a surprise to her that Safi, a student at the university, was targeted by the Israeli military.

Safi has been accused of involvement in a student organization, al-Qutub, affiliated with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which the U.S. and Israel consider a terrorist organization. The group was active during the Second Intifada, and some of its members were prosecuted for their involvement in attacks on Israelis, including suicide bombings.

Israeli prosecutors have very little evidence against Safi, according to her defense attorney, the strongest of which is a list of names of students allegedly involved in the student organization, passed to the Israeli military by an informant. The Israeli military and prosecutors did not respond to requests for comment on the basis for the detention.

“That’s the only reason she was detained. I don’t even have to claim it, the prosecution admits this is the only reason,” Tsemel said.

Due to her alleged involvement in the PFLP affiliate, Safi is considered by Israeli authorities to be a security prisoner, a designation that subjects her to harsher conditions that rights groups say violate international law.

“The whole hearing was a parade by the military court to show that everything is proper, everything is nice,” Tsemel said of the first hearing. “They even moved us from a small, lousy room to the nicest room in the court, to show that everything is so formally nice.”

McCaw, however, pointed out that the “sense of impunity” enjoyed by the Israeli military since October 7 is “making them increasingly inflexible in these cases.”

He added, “The United States should have a definitive policy that anytime an American is being held overseas in custody, either charges be filed or they be released, whether that’s Israel or not.”