Soumaya Hamdi was planning for the family holiday she would soon be taking with her husband when she received a text message that changed everything. “Is it true that Sami is being abducted?” a friend asked.

She had called her husband, British-Tunisian commentator and journalist Sami Hamdi , earlier that day to check in on him, as he travelled around the United States on a speaking tour discussing Israel’s war on Gaza. When he didn’t answer, Soumaya had assumed he was at a speaking engagement.

Instead, he had been detained by US immigration authorities, news that came as “a complete shock”, she told Al Jazeera.

“That’s not the text message that I think anyone ever wants to read,” she said

It was Sunday, October 26. Sami had been stopped at San Francisco International Airport. Unbekno

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