American journalist Jeremy Loffredo was released Friday morning by Israeli authorities after spending four days in Israeli detention following his arrest in the West Bank.
Although an Israeli judge granted his release from police custody, he was ordered to remain in the country until October 20, allowing investigators more time to bring additional allegations or to further interrogate Loffredo, according to Lea Tsemel, a renowned Israeli civil rights attorney who represented Loffredo. Police obtained Loffredo’s phone and were able to jailbreak the device and plan to search it for potential evidence, according to Israeli media.
Israeli police had held Loffredo, an independent journalist from New York, on suspicion of assisting an enemy in war, a serious allegation that carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment or death, Tsemel said. The allegations stem from his reporting for American media outlet The Grayzone, which showed the locations of several Iranian missiles launched at military targets inside Israel earlier this month, including footage near Nevatim, an Israeli air base, and the Mossad headquarters in Tel Aviv, Tsemel said. Though the same targets were featured in broadcasts by other media outlets, Israeli authorities tried to argued that Loffredo’s reporting allowed Iran to study future targets.
“He didn’t do anything original — he took it from different sources that were published already, all over, by Israeli and foreign journalists,” Tsemel told The Intercept, who decried the government’s attempts to charge Loffredo as “nonsense.”
Loffredo’s detainment, which drew little attention from Western media, comes amid an unprecedented year of Israel targeting journalists who are covering its war in Gaza. At least 126 journalists have been killed by Israeli forces since October 7, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. At least five of those journalists were specifically targeted by Israel for their work, CPJ said, as it investigates the killing of 10 others. And in the West Bank, CPJ documented 69 journalist arrests during the war, with 43 remaining in Israeli custody. Last month, an Israeli lawmaker requested Israeli police charge the head of human rights group B’Tselem, Yuli Novak, with the same charge aimed at Loffredo, after Novak provided an expert review before the United Nations Security Council.
Local Israeli media also faced censorship over coverage of the Iranian missile attack. An Israel Defense Forces censor had barred Israeli media from publishing the exact locations of missile impacts, according to The Times of Israel.
Prior to Loffredo’s release, The Grayzone released a statement on X, standing by his reporting.
“The claim that Loffredo and The Grayzone represent Israel’s enemy in wartime merely suggests that the Israeli government views the American people and free press as a legitimate target,” the statement read. “We represent no one else.”
The statement also called on the U.S. State Department to come to Loffredo’s defense, saying that the U.S. “has an obligation to defend its journalists who are merely adhering to their ethical obligation to inform the public of pertinent facts.”
Before Loffredo’s release, a State Department spokesperson told The Intercept it was “aware of reports of a U.S. citizen arrested in Israel and are monitoring the situation.”
“We have no higher priority than the safety and security of U.S. citizens abroad,” the spokesperson said.
Israeli judges overseeing Loffredo’s case had been skeptical of arguments to keep him jailed, Tsemel said. When police had requested a seven-day detention from the court, a judge ordered a one-day detention. Then, on Thursday, a separate judge had ordered his release, Tsemel said. An Israeli journalist with Ynet News had testified that Loffredo’s reporting did not violate the government’s censor and pointed to other similar reports. But authorities were able to file a last-minute appeal before court had closed, keeping Loffredo in custody.
During a hearing on Friday before a district court judge over the appeal, a judge ordered Loffredo’s release, after citing a lack of evidence and that he doesn’t pose a threat, Tsemel said.
“It’s a nice choir of judges saying he should be released,” she said.
Israel Defense Forces soldiers detained Loffredo on Tuesday afternoon at a checkpoint in the northern West Bank, alongside three other international and Israeli journalists, and their driver, a Palestinian man, according to Meir Gorodskoy, a photographer who was also detained with Loffredo.
At the checkpoint, IDF soldiers ordered the group and their driver out of the car, confiscating their phones and cameras, recalled Gorodskoy, a Canadian citizen who was born in Israel. The group, which also included two Israelis and a Russian-Israeli with dual citizenship, identified their nationalities and provided passports. Loffredo had identified himself as a U.S. citizen and member of the press, showing his credentials.
When one of the journalists refused to hand over their equipment, soldiers went on to hit him with their hands and the barrel of a gun, dragging him out of the car and slamming him onto the concrete, according to Andrey, a journalist who was detained with the group and shared their account on X on Friday. While lying on the ground, soldiers pointed their guns at his head.
“They were yelling horrific things … like how we should’ve been raped on October 7th and that it was our fault.”
During the arrest, the IDF forced the group to sit in the sun on the side of the road for more than an hour, Gorodskoy said, adding that at one point, their driver said he could not be exposed to the sun for long periods due to a medical condition. The soldiers proceeded to taunt the man, yelling “Vitamin D is good for you,” mockingly asking if he wanted sunscreen, and threw a water bottle at him, shouting “Drink!” in Arabic, Gorodskoy recalled. The Palestinian man was released after two hours.
The soldiers gathered the journalists, zip-tied their hands, placed them in blindfolds, and shoved them into the cramped space of a military vehicle, which drove them to a military base. During their drive, Gorodskoy said, soldiers yelled insults at the group. “They were yelling horrific things … like how we should’ve been raped on October 7th and that it was our fault,” Gorodskoy said. Andrey said the verbal attack was directed at the female journalists in the group.
The IDF transferred the group to a police station in the illegal Israeli settlement Ma’ale Adumim, where police cuffed their wrists and ankles, sat them down on the floor, and were told they were being held on suspicion of incitement. Officers interrogated the journalists about their political affiliation and work and denied their multiple requests for a lawyer, according to Gorodskoy and Andrey. After six hours, the group was released without charge, except for Loffredo, who was placed inside a holding cell. He was eventually transferred to an Israeli prison.
Gorodskoy’s camera and a colleague’s phone still remain in IDF possession.
The IDF did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Gorodskoy called their treatment “unprecedented” given their status as internationals and Israelis, but acknowledged that such practices by the IDF are common for Palestinians.
Palestinians living in the West Bank are barred from using certain roads and must cross through various IDF checkpoints as a part of everyday life. Thousands of Palestinians have also been arrested under administrative detention, in which detainees can be held indefinitely without charge.
The IDF has also killed Palestinian civilians during military raids or at protests in the West Bank. During a demonstration against an illegal Israeli settlement, an IDF soldier shot and killed 26-year-old Ayşenur Eygi, an American peace activist who had been there to help protect Palestinian protesters.
And in 2022, an Israeli sniper shot prominent Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, who was wearing a press vest, in the head while she was covering an IDF raid on the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank. Forensic evidence showed her killing to be intentional. However, an FBI probe into her death remains pending, and U.S. officials have gone silent on her case.
Update: October 11, 2024, 3:11 p.m. ET
The story has been updated with more details on how the group of journalists were detained by the Israeli military. One quote was mistranscribed; the IDF soldiers did not say that the journalists should be “erased” but that they should be “raped.”
