Israeli military extends detention of Palestinian journalist despite acknowledging lack of evidence
The Israeli military acknowledged Thursday that it does not have 'sufficient evidence' to substantiate terrorism funding allegations it leveled against a prominent Palestinian journalist, even as an Israeli general ordered he be detained for another six months.
The Israeli military's top general in the occupied West Bank ordered the journalist, Ali Samoudi, 58, to be held under administrative detention, which allows the military to hold individuals without trial for up to six months at a time. Administrative detention orders can be renewed indefinitely.
The commander issued the order on Wednesday following a military court hearing last week during which prosecutors sought to extend his detention.
'As sufficient evidence was not found against him, and in light of the accumulated intelligence material, security authorities requested to consider issuing an administrative detention order,' the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said in a statement to CNN. 'Today, after reviewing the intelligence, the commanding officer of the Central Command decided to place him under administrative detention for a period of six months.'
Palestinians living in the West Bank are subject to Israeli military law and are typically tried in military courts, not Israeli civilian courts.
Samoudi, a prominent Palestinian journalist who has worked with CNN and other Western news outlets, was detained by Israeli forces on April 29 following an early morning raid on his son's home in the West Bank city of Jenin.
At the time, the Israeli military accused him of transferring funds to Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a militant group in the West Bank and Gaza which Israel considers a terrorist organization. The Israeli military provided no evidence to back up its claim.
Israeli military prosecutors never leveled that accusation in court, Samoudi's lawyer Jamil al-Khatib said, instead vaguely accusing Samoudi of harming the activity of Israeli forces in the West Bank.
The military's administrative detention order cites Samoudi's 'presence posing a danger to the security of the region' as justification for his detention.
He is one of 20 journalists detained and held under administrative detention since the start of the war in Gaza, according to the Palestinian Prisoners' Society (PPS).
'Samoudi's arrest and administrative detention is part of the occupation's escalating campaign of targeting journalists, particularly through the systematic use of administrative detention,' the PPS said in a statement.
Samoudi is now being held in Megiddo prison in central Israel, according to his lawyer, where he is still waiting to receive his eyeglasses and medications for several chronic conditions, including high blood pressure and diabetes.
One of the most well-known Palestinian journalists in the West Bank, Samoudi has worked with international news organizations for decades as a local producer and fixer.
He was also a witness to the high-profile killing of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, by Israeli forces in 2022, during which he was also shot.
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It was even a central component of his 2024 presidential campaign. Suggesting any behind-the-scenes coordination is ridiculous,' a spokesperson for Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene said, pushing back on concerns around the timing of the trades. The Georgia Republican – whose 11 reported purchases on April 8 included between $1,000 and $15,000 worth of stock each, according to the filings – does not direct her own trades but instead has a fiduciary agreement with her portfolio manager, the spokesperson said. Around Trump's trade war, a number of Republicans publicly pledged support for Trump's economic policy while protecting their own financial interests. Sen. Markwayne Mullin sold between $290,000 and $700,000 in stocks across industries from a joint account on April 8 through 'an independent, third-party operator firm that manages all stock portfolio investments on his behalf,' according to his spokesperson. At the same time, the Oklahoma Republican was publicly supporting the president's escalating trade war, despite the financial decisions that appeared to mirror broader consumer concerns. Hern, the fourth-highest ranking Republican in the House said on February 13, shortly after Trump announced 25% tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from all countries: 'These reciprocal tariffs will incentivize other nations to level the playing field and remove long-standing, exorbitant tariffs.' On March 31 — two days before Trump announced expansive tariffs on April 2 — a trust affiliated with Hern sold between $500,000 and $1 million worth of structured investments. For Rep. Chip Roy of Texas, one of the Republicans behind the push to ban lawmaker stock trading, having an intermediary conduct the trades does little to assuage concern. 'Members of Congress should come here to advance the interests of their constituents, not to enrich themselves using stock trading,' Roy said. Rhode Island Rep. 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Sixteen lawmakers, evenly split among Democrats and Republicans, reported hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of transactions that day — most of them purchases. The president had confirmed at an afternoon White House event on March 3 that the tariffs would take effect the next day, leading to a sharp selloff in stocks. At that point, March 3 had so far been the worst day for the market. Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Dave McCormick, who reported purchases between $50,000 and $100,000, was the only lawmaker to report having personally traded on March 3. McCormick did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Lawmakers reached by CNN sought to distance themselves from the transactions filed during those key dates around Trump's tariffs announcements. CNN reached out to the 16 lawmakers who reported transactions on March 3, and the 35 lawmakers, some of whom overlapped, who reported having transactions between March 31 and April 9. 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Why these trans elders say they ‘aren't afraid' amid attacks on trans rights
When Renata Ramos was 5, she stood in front of a mirror, squeezed her eyes shut, and prayed that when she opened them, she would see a girl looking back at her. 'I'd go to the mirror, I'd look, and I was still a little boy,' she said. Ramos, 64, says she has been transgender for as long as she can remember. She didn't begin living openly as a woman until her 50s, suppressing her identity because she feared she'd lose her career as a model and actor. When she finally came out, it felt 'like walking on clouds,' she said. For Pride Month, CNN spoke with Ramos and other trans people over the age of 60 about their lives and what they've learned from watching the decades-long battle for trans rights unfold. Many spoke with pride and wonder about the strides the trans rights movement has made in the 21st century, with access to gender-affirming health care more accessible than ever and trans people protected from discrimination by laws in several states. But they also spoke about the anxiety and dismay provoked by the flurry of executive orders from President Donald Trump that target trans people – including declaring that there are only two genders, banning transgender women from participating in most women's sports, and barring transgender recruits from the military. The orders make good on Trump's campaign promise to crack down on 'gender ideology' and build on a wave of anti-trans laws passed largely in Republican states over the past few years. After decades of progress to protect trans rights, the current moment feels like a step back, some said. Still, the older trans people with whom CNN spoke emphasized their resilience in the face of anti-trans legislation – a resilience that has persisted throughout years of trans activism. 'No one can erase our identities,' Pauline Park, a trans activist and organizer, said. 'They can certainly try to take away our rights and undermine our ability to live openly and freely. And we need to resist that, and challenge that. 'But they can't erase our identities.' For Ramos, the latest attack on trans rights is just one more fight in a series of battles the LGBTQ community has fought in the past decades – and won. 'I don't give a damn' about the latest executive orders, she said. 'We've been overcoming one battle after the other all our lives.' The model and actress lived through the height of the AIDS crisis. After rallying for government action in Washington, DC, and attending countless friends' funerals, she saw the disease go from a death sentence to a survivable condition. And she witnessed same-sex marriage go from a dream to a mundane reality across the US. 'These young people are not used to it, which I completely understand,' she added. 'But we, from the old school, we're not afraid.' Ramos was born in Soca, a small and conservative city in Uruguay, where even coming out as gay 'scandalized' people, she said. She immigrated to Rhode Island alongside her family when she was 7. Although she was certain of her transgender identity from childhood, she thought she would never succeed as an actor if she came out. Most trans women she knew in her youth were pushed into sex work due to the lack of work opportunities for trans people, she said. Instead, she lived publicly as a gay man for decades, fantasizing about the day she would be able to retire and live as her true self. She worked as a Spanish-language interpreter while also racking up acting credits: She appeared as a 'drape' in 'Cry-Baby,' the 1990 film by iconic queer director John Waters. She finally began taking steps to medically and socially transition at 56, after a winding career that included stints in Washington, DC, Arizona, Miami, and New York, as well as an extended period of chronic illness followed by a stroke in 2014. Transitioning 'gave me comfort in my own skin,' she said. 'It's so beautiful.' She added that despite the current setbacks, acceptance of transgender people has increased significantly in the past years. It's only 'in the past decades, that you could be transgender and admit it,' she said. She emphasized the diversity of the trans community, despite stereotypes like those that link trans women to sex work. 'They only see one side of the transgender community,' she said. 'But there are many of us that have lived our dreams that are out there.' Criss Smith's gender journey starts in the sweltering heat of Jamaica – with a group of rambunctious boys and Go-Karts. Smith was seven years old, playing Go-Karts with his brother and friends. The other children – all boys – took off their shirts in the heat. But when Smith did the same, he was rebuked. His brother said, ''You're a girl child,'' Smith recalled. 'Oh my God, it was like he stabbed me in the heart.' 'I cried for two days because I did not want to be a girl child,' he said. It wasn't until Smith moved to the US and attended college at Skidmore in upstate New York that he met other queer people and came out as a lesbian, finding confidence in a masculine self-presentation. But even though he was part of a burgeoning queer community, his identity was still fraught by the aftereffects of his conservative, religious upbringing: 'I was so worried that the first time I had sex, I actually thought that God was going to strike me down,' he said. When he came out to his mother, she stopped speaking to him for a year. 'It was heartbreaking,' he said. Smith can still remember the first time he met an out trans person, a bartender in New York who was pursuing top surgery (a gender-affirming mastectomy) in California in the 80s – at a time when the gay rights movement was nascent and transgender rights were on the extreme periphery. He was 'blown away' by how the bartender 'was living so freely, and being so expressive,' he said. His own transition – which started when he was 52 after deep soul-searching and years of 'feeling like he was wearing a mask' – gave him the same sense of freedom. 'I felt like I was reborn,' he said. 'For the first time in my life, I felt like I was being truly me.' It's the same freedom that he hopes can be a lesson from trans people for the rest of the world, even as trans people face 'horrible' attacks on their freedoms and rights. 'Trans people teach the rest of society that freedom is real – because we live freedom every day,' he said. 'We live authenticity every day.' Being trans has been the ultimate expression of self-love, he added. 'That's our superpower, is that we love ourselves so much that we're able to make a choice that is for us only,' he said. 'That's the highest form of self-love.' For Pauline Park, attacks on transgender and queer identity are more than just repressive. They also directly contradict a long and rich history of gender variance across the world. 'There have been people like us since the dawn of history,' she told CNN. She pointed to transgender traditions like the hijra community in South Asia and kathoey in Thailand, as well as Guanyin, a figure in Buddhist mythology who is often represented as genderless or as shifting from male to female. 'It's important to recognize that, in the larger span of history, we have existed, and we will continue to exist,' she said. Park's own coming out went hand-in-hand with her work advocating for LGBT rights. Like Ramos and Smith, Park had long known she was trans – but adopted from South Korea into a 'Christian, fundamentalist household' when she was less than a year old, she 'knew instinctively' that her gender identity wasn't something she could discuss with her parents. Even same-sex marriage was 'inconceivable' when she grew up, she said. A career pivot to LGBT activism brought her to lead the campaign for a transgender rights bill in New York City, and she came out and began living as a woman full-time shortly after. 'Actualizing my transgender identity has been instrumental in my ability to bring about social change,' she said. Park cofounded the New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy and has helped advocate for trans rights across the state. Park has led hundreds of transgender sensitivity trainings, she said, where one of the main goals is to help participants 'realize that when you're talking about transgender, you're actually talking about everyone,' she said. 'Not that everyone is trans, but the issues that transgender people face are issues that are rooted in structural oppressions,' she explained. 'We have to think about society as a whole – and whether we want to make it welcoming and inclusive or not.' That work is particularly important right now, when 'the community is now under unprecedented attack, from the highest leadership in the land,' according to Park. She called transphobia 'one of the last generally acceptable prejudices in our society.' She added that anti-trans legislation will have the most devastating impacts on trans youth. Restrictions on gender-affirming care, she said, won't stop trans youth from pursuing that care – but they might mean that they turn to black market solutions instead of gender-affirming therapy overseen by a doctor. 'People will actualize their identities if they want to, even in the face of legal and structural impediments,' she said. 'The effort to try to eliminate gender-affirming care is going to fail, but it's going to harm a lot of people,' she said. 'It's ultimately both futile and morally reprehensible – and it won't work.' For Justin Vivian Bond, the Trump administration's attacks on nonbinary identity reflect 'willful ignorance' more than anything else. The 62-year-old cabaret performer and actor grew up in the 60s and 70s, when even same-sex marriage seemed a far-off dream. As a child, they were terrified to come out to their family. Today, they're a trailblazer in nonbinary representation and something of an institution in New York City's music and theater scene. 'Some people are so resistant to anything that they don't know that they'll never know me – because they're just too ignorant,' they said. The concept of trans or nonbinary identities might be new to some people, they noted. But 'constant change, constant evolution, is part of being alive,' they went on. 'Otherwise you might as well just, you know, hang up your hat and go home and never leave again — or, in other words, drop dead.' A Maryland native, Bond's own career is a testament to the evolution of queer art and culture. They started their career in San Francisco, performing in trans playwright Kate Bornstein's 'Hidden: A Gender' before developing the legendary character of Kiki, 'a 60-some-year-old alcoholic lounge singer with ex-husbands and children,' one half of the 'Kiki and Herb' cabaret duo in which Bond performed in drag. The over-the-top, enraged character was forged at the height of the AIDS epidemic, through a palpable sense of anger from 'the knowledge that the people in power literally wanted us dead.' Since then, Bond has built a flourishing career as a solo artist, maintaining a years-long residency at Joe's Pub at The Public Theater in NYC and receiving a 2024 MacArthur 'genius grant' for crafting 'performances that center queer joy.' Bond's gender, like their artistic practice, is 'constantly evolving,' they said. After decades playing with gender and performance in their on-stage work and life, they started taking hormone replacement therapy in their 50s. 'Still to this day, I don't like being trapped into any identity, because it's just not something that is fixed,' they explained. Bond's own response to the newest waves of attacks by the Trump administration was one of exasperation and frustration: 'Why do we have to go through this?' But the queer community has survived worse, they said. 'All of our rights were fought for,' they said. 'We've always had ways of working around these patriarchal nimrods, and living our lives and being happy and enjoying each other's company and dancing together and partying together and living together and sleeping together and cooking together.' 'That's not going to stop just because they say we should be unhappy.' Dawn Melody realized that she might be trans later in life – after her son came out first. In 2012, her 12-year-old told her he was transgender. Melody, trusting her children to 'tell [her] who they are,' quickly affirmed his identity, supporting him as he cut his hair and came out to friends and family. 'Watching that young person go on to bravely be who they are' was 'inspiring,' she said. And a few years later, it inspired her own soul-searching. Melody had long harbored an ineffable feeling that 'something was different.' But growing up in an Irish Catholic household in Westchester, New York, being queer was off the table – and 'the idea of transgender, that was like being from another planet,' she told CNN. In her 50s, Melody, still searching for the source of that constant feeling of 'difference,' sought out women's clothes and a wig to test-drive presenting as a woman at home. That first trial felt 'miraculous,' she said. Melody said that she had ultimately been inspired by her son's 'steadfast' commitment to his identity. 'This is me taking the cue from my child that that if you're brave enough to do this, so am I,' she said. When Trump first began signing anti-trans legislation in January, she felt 'nausea.' 'He declared it during his inauguration speech that I don't exist,' she said. 'That I'm undesirable.' Melody framed the executive orders as 'frantically trying to sweep back the sea when the sea can't be swept back.' But 'there's no way to stop progress,' she said. And despite the attacks, being trans is 'the best thing that ever happened to me,' she added. 'I'm glad that I am this way, and I wouldn't change it for all the tea in China,' she said. Living as a woman feels like 'swimming with the current' after decades of fighting to swim across it, she said. She added that she hopes trans youth today can keep faith in themselves despite a wave of anti-trans sentiment and legislation. 'It's not without its moments of horror and fear, but life is such a gift – and it's way too short.'
