West Bank Jenin —
Ali al-Samoudi carefully descends the stairs to his home.
The 59-year-old Palestinian journalist is thin with close-cropped gray hair and a matching beard. With each deliberate step he takes, it becomes clear that all the physical strain he has endured has aged him beyond his years.
Although we have worked with Sammoudi for years, it has been over a year since we met him in person. We barely recognize him.
Sammoudi was released last week from an Israeli prison where he had been held for a year. He was not charged with a crime and was instead detained under an administrative detention order that allows Israeli forces to imprison Palestinians for up to six months at a time without trial. Orders can be renewed indefinitely.
“It was really hell. Today’s prison is hell in every sense of the word,” Sammoudi said in an interview from his home in Jenin. “Everything they practiced against us was punishment and revenge.”
According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, he is one of 105 Palestinian journalists detained and imprisoned since October 7, 2023, most of whom are also held without charge. The staggering scale of detentions made Israel the third worst prison for journalists in 2025, after China and Myanmar, according to CPJ. According to the organization, 33 Palestinian journalists remain imprisoned in Israel.
Sammoudi is a well-known journalist who has worked as a local producer and fixer for international broadcasters including CNN. He was by the side of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akre when she was shot dead by Israeli forces in 2022. He was also shot in the shoulder in the same incident.
Despite 40 years of reporting experience, Sammoudi said he was shocked by the conditions in Israeli prisons, where he endured physical and psychological abuse and at times wondered if he would make it out alive. Israeli prisons did not respond to CNN’s request for comment on Sammoudi’s detention.
Samoudi lost 60 kilograms (132 pounds), about half of his body weight, during his one year in prison.
“They basically gave us food just to keep us alive,” Samoudi said. “Breakfast consists of a spoonful of labneh and a quarter spoonful of jam. Lunch is four cups of rice with two cucumbers, two tomatoes, or two bell peppers.”
He described the dinner as a “lavish” meal. Two cups of hummus, one cup of tahini, and one egg. On Saturdays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays, prison services will add a small chicken or piece of meat, he said.
Dozens of other Palestinian prisoners of war have been released from Israeli prisons in weakened condition. Israel’s Supreme Court ruled in September that the state was failing to meet the basic nutritional needs of prisoners and ordered improvements to prison conditions. But far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, who oversees the prisons, reinforced the tough approach, boasting of the poor quality of food in prisons and that they were provided with “the bare minimum.”
Books, pens and paper were all banned, Sammoudi said. She said the small amount of shampoo she received each week was labeled as for dogs. And every move within and between prisons was accompanied by physical abuse.
When he went to a detention hearing, he was assaulted. The same was true for those who came to the clinic.
“One time, after I returned from a meeting with my lawyer, they threw us on the ground and on our faces and started beating us,” Samoudi said. “An Israeli officer stood there and stomped on my head like this and held my face against the ground for four minutes until I choked.”
But the hardest thing for Sammoudi to talk about was what he witnessed others endure. Like the young man in solitary confinement who was denied medical treatment.
Samoudi said one of his cellmates, 22-year-old Luai Turkman from Jenin, who was also in administrative detention, fell into critical condition one night.
“We asked them to take him to the clinic, but they refused,” Samoudi said.
By the next morning, the guards had not taken him to the clinic, so Samoudi and other prisoners carried him out into the garden on a mattress.
Sammoudi said Turkman died there in front of his fellow prisoners.
“He didn’t do anything,” Samoudi exclaimed. “Why? Aren’t we human beings?” (Israeli prisons did not respond to questions about Turkman’s death.)
When Sammoudi was arrested in April 2025, the Israeli military claimed he was suspected of funding the Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad, a designated terrorist organization by Israel and the United States.
The Israeli military labeled Samoudi a “terrorist” and said he was “identified with an Islamic Jihad terrorist organization and suspected of transferring funds to terrorist organizations.”
When asked about this claim, Sammoudi said: “It’s bullshit.”
Not only was Sammoudi never charged with any crime, he says, interrogators never raised the allegation that he had financed Islamic Jihad or any other terrorist organization.
Instead, he said, interrogators questioned him about his reporting and claimed he was endangering Israel’s security.
“My arrest is part of Israel’s war against the Palestinian press and media, to silence my voice, block my cameras and break my pen to prevent me from practicing freedom of the press, a right guaranteed by all laws and international norms,” Sammoudi said.
Asked if he feared he would be sent back to prison if he spoke out, Sammoudi laughed knowingly.
“Yes, yes, yes, that’s right. Yes, I am worried that they will arrest me,” Samoudi said. “There are also many journalists who have been released and then rearrested.”
But he says he won’t be deterred from returning to his job as a journalist.
“My work as a journalist is part of my life,” Sammoudi said. “That is my mission in this life.”
