UNITED STATES
A judge orders the release of Mahmoud Khalil
The American justice system ordered the release of the Propalentinian figure of Columbia on Friday.
Protesters at Columbus Circle in New York holding signs demanding the release of Mahmoud Khalil on April 12, 2025.
Getty Images via AFP
An American judge ordered the liberation under certain conditions of Mahmoud Khalil on Friday, on Friday, is a Propalestinian demonstrations on the campus of Columbia University, which for more than three months in an immigrant detention center.
Since his arrest in New York on March 8, for his role as spokesperson for the challenge against the war in Gaza on New York campus, Mahmoud Khalil has become the symbol of the will of the American president Donald Trump to muzzle this student movement.
After his arrest by the Federal Immigration Police (ICE), Mahmoud Khalil, born in Syria of Palestinian parents, holder of a green resident card, had been transferred to nearly 2000 kilometers, to a detention center in Louisiana (south), with a view to his possible expulsion.
A new twist
Last week, judge Michael Farbiarz of the New Jersey Federal Court, near New York, had declared that the government could not hold Mahmoud Khalil based on the statements of Secretary of State Marco Rubio. According to the latter, his presence on American soil posed a threat to the security of the United States.
But the Ministry of Justice had replied that it would not be “illegal” to have Mahmoud Khalil on the basis of another reason for accusation, which had prompted the judge to stay his release.
In a new twist of this Saga Juridico-Politico-Universitaire, judge Farbiarz ordered the release of Mahmoud Khalil on Friday. And during a second telephone hearing another judge detailed the conditions for his release which should take place in the coming hours.
“Sanction freedom of expression for the benefit of the Israeli government”
Mahmoud Khalil’s lawyers will have to give his passport to the American authorities who will have to give him his green card. Mr. Khalil will not be authorized to leave American territory, except in the case of a “self-expulsion” approach, and will have to limit his trips to a few states, including that of New York, where he resides, and that of Michigan, where his wife is from, who gave birth to their son when he was in detention.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a organization for the defense of civil rights of Muslims, immediately welcomed the decision of the Federal Court of New Jersey, believing that “the first amendment (of the American Constitution) simply did not authorize the government to sanction freedom of expression for the benefit of the Israeli government”.
Emblematic, the case of Mahmoud Khalil was not unique and is part of a charge of the Trump government against universities which he accuses of having not sufficiently protected from Jewish students during student demonstrations against the devastating war of Israel in the Gaza Strip.
Against an ideology known as “woke”
And more generally against an ideology known as “woke”, a term used in a pejorative way by the conservatives to denounce what they perceive as an excess of activism in favor of minorities.
The friend of Mahmoud Khalil, Mohsen Madawi, co -founder of a group of Palestinian students in Columbia, had been arrested on April 14 by ICE agents before being released under two weeks later by a court decision.
And at the beginning of May, a judge had ordered the release of Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish doctoral student from Toft University in Massachusetts, arrested by ICE agents for an article she had co -signed in her university newspaper criticizing the way her establishment managed the protest movement against the war waged by Israel in the Gaza Strip.
During the graduation ceremony at the end of May in Columbia, the president of the university had been copiously hooked by students who reproached her for not having defended Mahmoud Khalil, arrested in a university residence and of yielding to Trump pressure. In the opposite sense, the president of Harvard University had received a monster ovation from his students for defending the freedoms of expression and academic in the face of this Washington offensive.
“Latest news”
Do you want to stay at the top of the info? “24 Hours” offers you two meetings per day, directly in your email box. To not miss anything of what is happening in your canton, Switzerland or in the world.
Other newsletters
AFP
Did you find an error? Please report it to us.
