A message from Mahmoud Khalil

26 September 2025

Three months ago, thanks to your action, Mahmoud Khalil was released from unjust detention

Mahmoud is a Columbia graduate who was unlawfully detained for 104 days, separated from his family, and forced to miss his son's birth, simply for speaking out against genocide.

The Amnesty movement, including thousands of Australians, successfully campaigned for his release. Universities around the World are attacking students, staff and academic freedom simply for peacefully protesting Israel's genocide in Gaza.

To this day, he remains at risk of deportation but has shared a message to all the Amnesty supporters who stood with him from around the world.

"Your advocacy did not only free me, your advocacy gave hope to an entire people. You proved that collective action works."

To the organizers and members of Amnesty International in the United States and around the world:

I write with deep gratitude for your solidarity during my recent detention. In moments when my freedom was stripped from me, your support reminded me that I was not alone, that my voice still carried, and that the struggle for justice is larger than any one of us.

For 104 days I was unlawfully detained by U.S. immigration authorities in rural Louisiana and separated from my family and my community for speaking out against the genocide of my people. The support of communities from around the world is what kept me going. You kept me going. Thank you for raising your voices when I was detained and separated from my family.

My release is not the end of this story. Many others remain behind bars - immigrants, refugees, and activists who, like me, were torn from their families by the Trump administration's cruel machinery of suppression, detention, and deportation. Their names are less visible, their stories less told, but their suffering is no less real. I ask that we continue to hold them in our collective conscience and fight for their freedom.

My detention was political. It was an attempt to silence me for speaking openly about Palestinian rights, for refusing to let the daily reality of occupation, apartheid, forced starvation and mass killing be normalized. But repression does not weaken conviction, it strengthens it. I will not back down. The fight for Palestinian liberation is inseparable from the global struggle for justice, dignity, and human rights that Amnesty International has long championed.

Thank you for standing with me, not only in my personal ordeal but in the broader struggle that connects all of us. Though powerful forces are trying to discredit, dehumanize and erase us, we must continue our work together.

Many Palestinians across the occupied territories and across the world are still suffering. Families are still struggling to survive. Children are still being starved. Lives are still being destroyed.

So please, stay committed to your important activism. Keep raising your voices. Keep demanding justice and accountability. Keep fighting - not just for me, but for all of us.

In solidarity,
Mahmoud Khalil

Amnesty International is a global movement of more than 10 million people who take injustice personally. We are campaigning for a world where human rights are enjoyed by all - and we can only do it with your support.

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