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 reviewbefore 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 mediafrom 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.

https://theintercept.com/2024/10/11/us-journalist-jeremy-loffredo-released-israel-detained/

On October 11, journalist Jeremy Loffredo was ordered released from Israeli jail.

Israeli soldiers arrested the Jewish-American reporter and three other journalists at a checkpoint in the West Bank on October 8. According to one of the jailed reporters, @the_andrey_x, the soldiers blindfolded them tightly, roughed them up, drawing guns on them at one point, and hauled them off to detention in Jerusalem. 

“The soldiers… illegally requested that the journalists hand in their phones, and when they refused, the soldiers pointed a gun at one of the journalists, hit him with their hands and the barrel of a gun, then dragged him out of the car and slammed him onto the concrete. When lying on the ground, they pointed 2 guns at his head. The rest of the journalists exited the car and the military raided it, confiscating phones, cameras, and personal items,” said @the_andrey_x.

Andrey recalled that in the course of abusing the journalists, “The soldiers told the female Israeli photographer that she should have been raped by Hamas.”

While Loffredo’s colleagues were released after 11 hours, the “Judea and Samaria” division of the Israeli police opened an investigation into Loffredo for supposedly “aiding the enemy in a time of war.”

The Israeli police’s accusation related to Loffredo’s video report for The Grayzone covering the aftermath of Iranian missile strikes aimed at Israeli military installations. According to the police, Jeremy had revealed “the locations of missile drops near or inside sensitive security facilities, with the aim of bringing this to the notice of the enemy, and thereby assisting them in their future attacks.”

Watch Jeremy Loffredo’s report, “On the ground investigating Iran’s strikes on Israel” here.

On October 9, an Israeli court declared it had “reasonable suspicion” to extend the journalist’s imprisonment. At a hearing the next day, the police insisted to Magistrate’s Court Judge Zion Sahrai that Loffredo was not an actual journalist, but did not present any evidence that he was pursuing a hostile ulterior agenda.

A journalist from the Israeli publication YNet countered the allegation that Loffredo violated Israeli censorship laws by pointing out that the military censor approved his own article in which a tweet containing Loffredo’s full video report for The Grayzone was embedded. 

Judge Sahrai ordered Loffredo’s release, stating that since Israeli military censors agreed to allow Ynet to publish both “word of [Jeremy’s] arrest and the publications that led to his arrest,” Israel could “no longer justify his continued detention.”

However, the police appealed Sahrai’s decision, protesting that the censor only approved the YNet article retroactively, and would have never done so if it had been submitted in advance.

That police also complained that Loffredo had refused to unlock his phone for them, insisting they needed more time to crack the device. “We believe that we will find things on the phone and we will be able to link him [to the alleged crime],” a police representative stated.

That argument did not hold water with Jerusalem District Court Judge Hana Miriam Lomp, however. “The Court of First Instance did not err when it ordered the release of the respondent,” Judge Lomp stated during the October 11 appeal. “From the detailed investigative actions there is no fear of disruption [from Jeremy], and in light of the reasons stated above, the cause of the danger is also not clear.”

Though Lomp ordered the journalist be released, she gave police until October 20 to continue their digital strip search. Until then, Loffredo will remain without his passport and will not be permitted to return home to his family in the US.

Just what Israeli officials hope to uncover in their search of Loffredo’s cell phone remains a mystery. Also unclear is why the investigation focuses exclusively on Loffredo, and not on any of the numerous other reporters who reported the locations of the Iranian strikes. 

After Iran launched several hundred ballistic missiles at Israeli military targets on October 1, several international journalists broadcast reports from the scene of blasts, including ABC News’ Matt Gutman and PBS Newshour’s Nick Schifrin.

The Grayzone published a statement on October 10 unequivocally rejecting the Israeli police’s outrageous accusations against Loffredo. We repeat that we stand by Jeremy’s report. 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. Indeed, we are an independent outlet with no relationship, financial or otherwise, with any foreign country or political organization.

As we fight the fraudulent charges against Jeremy, we ask readers to contact the US State Department and urge them to act in his defense. The US has an obligation to defend its journalists without political prejudice, particularly when they are fulfilling the vital task of providing the public with facts on the ground.

https://thegrayzone.com/2024/10/11/israeli-jails-grayzones-jeremy-loffredo/

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