Protesters held for opposing detention of Palestine activist

The New York City police arrested scores of demonstrators who were protesting on Thursday at the Trump Tower against the detention of a Palestinian activist and military support for Israel.

The crowd of about 150 demonstrators — from the progressive anti-Zionist group Jewish Voice for Peace, who wore shirts with the message, "Jews Say Stop Arming Israel", gathered at about noon in a downstairs atrium outside the Trump Grill restaurant in Manhattan, the New York Post reported.

A total of 98 people were arrested.

"Those arrests are for trespassing, obstructing government administration, and resisting arrest by virtue of us having to carry some of the people out of the escalator, which you saw," said NYPD Chief of Department John Chell.

Some protesters carried signs that said "Free Mahmoud, Free Palestine".

Mahmoud Khalil is a Palestinian graduate of Columbia University who was detained by US immigration authorities over the weekend. He has organized many of the pro-Palestine protests at the Ivy League campus in New York.

A permanent resident of the US, Khalil was taken into custody by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents on March 8. A federal judge has temporarily blocked his deportation, and Khalil is awaiting proceedings in a federal jail in Louisiana. "I'm just standing up for my rights, and I'm standing up for Mahmoud Khalil, who has been abducted illegally and taken to an undisclosed location," said one of the protesters, the US actor Debra Winger, to The Associated Press. "Does that sound like America to you?"

Khalil, 30, who is married to a US citizen and hasn't been charged with breaking any laws, was arrested outside his New York City apartment.

US President Donald Trump, in a post on March 10 on his Truth Social platform, called Khalil a "Radical Foreign Pro-Hamas Student" and announced his arrest was "the first arrest of many to come".

"We know there are more students at Columbia and other Universities across the country who have engaged in pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity, and the Trump Administration will not tolerate it," Trump said.

Media reports on Thursday said Khalil has worked for the British government on its "flagship soft power policy".

"It's outright defamation what Trump has done. Mahmoud is an extremely kind and conscientious person and he was loved by his colleagues at the Syria Office," Andrew Waller, a former British diplomat, told the Middle East Eye website.

Agencies contributed to this story.