Ahmed Shihab-Eldin excels at exposing injustice. His overseas arrest deserves the same scrutiny.

Our conversation didn't last long.

The cheers would have drowned out our small talk, and Ahmed Shihab-Eldin and I had to tend to the crowd that swarmed Malcolm London, a young poet and activist who had been cleared of punching a Chicago police officer during protests decrying the deadly police shooting of Laquan McDonald.

Soon after I told Shihab-Eldin I admired his work while we reported on Cook County prosecutors' decision to drop charges against London, the award-winning journalist followed me back on Twitter.

I received another notification — less friendly than Shihab-Eldin's gesture — on my social media feed that same day over 10 years ago. A woman who trekked to the Leighton Criminal Courthouse with dozens of others to support London scolded me for posting her picture in my news story.

She didn't object to my using the snapshot over safety concerns. Rather, she was irate that I didn't ask for permission, which as a media professional I am not required to do when covering demonstrations and rallies in public spaces.

I was lucky I only got a lecture.

Shihab-Eldin, 41, is now facing more dire consequences for doing his job.

The Berkeley, California, native is believed to have been detained in Kuwait for nearly seven weeks, not for disseminating what was unfolding on the date palm-lined sidewalks, but apparently for sharing footage and the aftermath of activity miles above in the sky.

The images Shihab-Eldin reposted on Substack and social media since the United States and Israel launched airstrikes in Iran in late February were "vetted and verified" and used by reputable news outlets, according to Gypsy Guillén Kaiser, the chief global affairs officer for the Committee to Protect Journalists.

None of the videos posted were filmed by Shihab-Eldin, a dual Kuwaiti American national who has worked at PBS, The New York Times, Al Jazeera English, The Huffington Post and "Vice" on HBO, Guillén Kaiser said.

Kuwaiti authorities have yet to officially confirm what Shihab-Eldin has been accused of. But through their research, CPJ staffers were able to piece together that he was likely locked up and charged with breaking a relatively vague law designed to curtail press freedom under the guise of "harming national security."

Shihab-Eldin was last heard from on March 2 — the date of his last post: a CNN clip of a U.S. Air Force fighter jet crash over Kuwait, where Shihab-Eldin had been visiting relatives. The same day, the country's interior ministry warned against filming or publishing videos or information tied to the Iran war and relayed that several people were arrested for spreading false news. Less than two weeks later, the U.S. ally issued a decree stipulating a sentence of up to 10 years in prison for such offenses that "undermine the prestige of the military or deliberately work toward eroding public trust in them."

"It's a tragedy," Guillén Kaiser said of Shihab-Eldin's detention in a country that lists "freedom of opinion and scientific research" in its constitution and is among the signatories of the United Nations’ International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

Guillén Kaiser hopes and expects the Trump administration will "vigorously pursue" Shihab-Eldin's release.

His sisters, Lara and Luma Eldin, expressed the same sentiment in statements they and their international legal team issued Friday.

I hope they are right.

President Donald Trump hasn't exactly been quick to protect most journalists' rights, and many of our elected leaders have established that the well-being of Palestinians and the Palestinian diaspora isn't their priority.

Shihab-Eldin, whose parents were forced to flee to Kuwait from their native Palestine before immigrating to the U.S., continually travels the world to do on-the-ground reports that serve as an antidote to such discriminatory attitudes, his friends said.

"Ahmed has consistently centered and amplified communities that are too often underrepresented or excluded from mainstream narratives," said Sabrina Siddiqui, the national politics reporter for the Wall Street Journal who worked with Shihab-Eldin at the Huffington Post.

Shihab-Eldin has often used his trademark thoughtfulness to think outside the box, added Sree Sreenivasan, the co-founder of the South Asian Journalists Association and a former professor at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism.

"When he was my student around 2006-2007, he was exploring the possibilities and opportunities for audience engagement and digital innovations way before we even had the terminology for those things," Sreenivasan said.

Sreenivasan, Siddiqui and others in Shihab-Eldin's orbit didn't learn about his detention until the news broke to the rest of the public last week.

"I'm sure he knew of the dangers involved. But no one expected this," Sreenivasan said.

When Shihab-Eldin and I crossed paths in Chicago more than a decade ago, the judge presiding over the case we were covering told the man standing before her, “You are free to go.”

Many of us want Shihab-Eldin to hear those same words too.

Rummana Hussain is a columnist and leads the opinion coverage at the Sun-Times.