An Indian court extended the pre-trial detention of opposition leader and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal until May 20 on Tuesday, legal news website Live Law reported, weeks before the capital votes in national elections.

The country’s financial crime-fighting agency arrested Kejriwal – a staunch critic of Prime Minister Narendra Modi – on March 21 in connection with corruption allegations relating to Delhi’s liquor policy, charges his party has denied.

He has been in pre-trial detention since April 1.

Al Jazeera will look to pursue all possible legal action “until the end” to challenge Israel’s ban on its operations there, the TV network’s news director told AFP in an interview.

The Qatar-based station was taken off air in Israel after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government voted on Sunday to shut it down over its coverage of the Gaza war.

Speaking on Monday, Al Jazeera English news director Salah Nagm said the network would “follow every legal path”, adding: “If there is a possibility of challenging that decision we are going to pursue it until the end.”

Under a cabinet decision which Netanyahu said was “unanimous”, Al Jazeera’s Jerusalem offices were shuttered, its equipment confiscated and its team’s accreditations pulled.

“The equipment which was confiscated, the loss that we suffered from stopping our broadcast, all of that is subject matter for legal action,” Nagm said.

The Israeli government on Sunday said the order was initially valid for 45 days, with the possibility of an extension.

Hours later, screens in Israel carrying Al Jazeera’s Arabic and English channels went blank, apart from a message in Hebrew saying they had “been suspended in Israel”.

‘An action from the 60s’

The shutdown does not apply to the Israeli-occupied West Bank or Gaza Strip, from which Al Jazeera still broadcasts live on Israel’s war with Hamas.

Al Jazeera immediately condemned Israel’s decision as “criminal”, saying on social media site X that it “violates the human right to access information”.

But Najm downplayed the ban’s impact on Al Jazeera’s coverage of the war and on the public’s ability to access its content, even with its website now blocked in Israel.

“It’s an action from the 60s rather than the 21st century to take such a decision of shutting down,” he said, explaining the channel could rely on other sources for information without “people on the ground”.

“I know people that have VPN can see us online anytime,” the news director said referring to virtual private networks that establish protected internet connections and can allow users to access the internet as if they were in a different country.

The decision came after Israel’s parliament last month voted to pass a new national security law granting senior ministers powers to ban broadcasts by foreign channels over threats to security.

In his statement on Sunday, Netanyahu charged that “Al Jazeera correspondents have harmed the security of Israel and incited against IDF (Israeli military) soldiers”.

‘Arbitrary decision’

But Nagm questioned which Al Jazeera broadcasts the Israeli government considered a security threat, calling the ban an “arbitrary decision”.

Since the start of the Gaza war, Al Jazeera’s office in the Palestinian territory has been bombed and two of its correspondents killed.

“Al Jazeera has lost a few people, their families have suffered so that’s really different from other conflicts in this sense,” Nagm said.

Al Jazeera’s Gaza bureau chief Wael al-Dahdouh was wounded in an Israeli strike in December that killed the network’s cameraman.

Dahdouh’s wife, two of their children and a grandson were killed in October in a bombardment of central Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp.

And Dahdouh’s eldest son, an Al Jazeera staff journalist, was killed alongside another journalist in Rafah in January when an Israeli strike targeted the car they were travelling in.

At least 97 journalists and media workers have been killed since the war began, among them Palestinians, Israelis and Lebanese, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

“That’s not something that we can just report politely,” Nagm said.

“We have to be wary and careful and alert the people of the nature of the war that’s going on and how deadly it is for the people and also for us as a profession.” 

The killing of the brilliant young AFP journalist Arman Soldin on the front lines in Ukraine one year ago remains a uniquely traumatic event for all of us.

There is nothing more painful for a newsroom than to lose a friend and colleague in the line of fire.

Arman had proved both his talent as a video storyteller and his unbridled commitment to his craft. He was passionate about giving a voice to the ordinary people caught up in the tumult of war.

His death at 32 was not just a crime, it was a great loss to journalism.

At AFP we try to honour his memory every day with our continued commitment to reporting from Ukraine as well as Gaza, Lebanon, Israel and many other conflicts on our increasingly fragile planet. It is our mission, it is in our DNA, we do not consider it a choice.

But that does not mean we can accept a growing global culture of impunity around the killing, maiming and imprisonment of journalists. The statistics are profoundly shocking.

Killed and detained

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) records over 950 journalists worldwide murdered for doing their job since 1992. It has documented over 90 journalists killed in Gaza over the past seven months alone, an unprecedented assault on press freedom that has passed largely under the radar.

The CPJ also notes over 350 journalists detained worldwide last year including Russia-based Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, a former AFP colleague with many friends in our newsroom.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) also stated last week in their annual Press Freedom Index that the primary culprits in the failure to protect journalists are governments and politicians. The tilt towards authoritarianism and populism is systematically undermining a culture where journalists are valued in society.

The lack of outrage and concrete action over this unacceptable state of affairs cannot be allowed to stand. It is essential the media industry rallies together and uses every lever available to push back against this creeping and existential threat.

Those responsible for this unprecedented attack on civil society should be named, held to account and ultimately brought to justice. It may take time, but we need to be resolute and stay the course.

Arman was killed by a Russian Grad rocket attack as he reported with colleagues on the bloody battle for the town of Bakhmut on May 9, 2023. The group, which included several Ukrainian soldiers, appears to have been directly targeted, but we don’t know yet whether they were targeted because journalists were present.

War crimes investigation

We are encouraged that French anti-terrorism prosecutors have opened a war crimes investigation to determine the exact circumstances of Arman’s death. We hope this will bring some answers and accountability.

We are also working to bring clarity to the circumstances around the horrific attack by an Israeli tank on a group of journalists in southern Lebanon on October 13. The attack killed Reuters journalist Issam Abdallah and wounded six other journalists including AFP photographer Christina Assi and video journalist Dylan Collins. Christina had a leg amputated and spent five months in intensive care in hospital.

One of our strongest weapons in our fight against impunity is our own journalism. The rise of open-source intelligence (OSINT) techniques has given digital investigators tremendous resources to track down culprits and provide facts to counter false narratives and misinformation. The combination of this digital sleuthing with old-fashioned on-the-ground evidence gathering is a powerful cocktail.

In southern Lebanon, the investigative journalism of AFP and Reuters has produced facts to prove that Israeli tank fire was responsible. Military experts say it is evident the group, who were all clearly identified as press, were deliberately targeted. This was not about the fog of war. Something went terribly wrong, and we must now have answers.

This is a tough and unsettling anniversary for all Arman Soldin’s family, friends and colleagues. His force of personality, humanity and humour left deep traces and memories which cannot be erased. We grieve deeply for his loss. And we shall continue to seek justice for his killing.