Activists deported from Israel denounce 'abuse'

Several activists from the Gaza flotilla, expelled by Israel on Monday, said on their arrival in Athens that they had been "beaten" and treated "like animals" after their convoy was boarded at sea by the Israeli navy.

"We were treated like animals. We were treated like terrorists," Yasmin Acar, a member of the steering committee of the Global Sumud Flotilla, told AFP when it left Barcelona, Spain, in early September.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry said that "all legal rights" of the activists, including those of Sweden's Greta Thunberg, had been "fully respected" and denounced "lies."

"We were physically assaulted and deprived of sleep," Acar said, adding that she had received no drinking water or food "for the first 48 hours" of her detention.

She was one of 161 new Gaza flotilla activists expelled by Israel from Germany and landed at Athens International Airport on Monday afternoon.

Ten others landed in Bratislava, Slovakia.

Earlier in the day, Israel said it had expelled 171 activists, including the Swedish environmental activist.

At Athens airport, Greta Thunberg and other expelled activists were greeted with a huge Palestinian flag and supporters chanting "freedom for Palestine" and "Viva viva la flotilla!" an AFP journalist said.

The Global Sumud flotilla "was the largest attempt to break Israel's illegal and inhumane siege by sea," Greta Thunberg said on her arrival with her fist raised and waving a keffiyeh.

She also spoke of "the mistreatment and abuse suffered" during their imprisonment but without going into details.

Flotilla activists 'beaten'

Franco-Palestinian MEP Rima Hassan also told AFP that she had been "beaten."

"I was beaten when I got into the van by two policemen," said the elected representative of France Insoumise (LFI, radical left).

"We have a lot of things to denounce," she said, dressing, like Greta Thunberg, in a gray tracksuit used in Israeli prisons.

"There were sometimes 13-15 of us per cell ... on mattresses on the floor" in "Israel's high-security prison [in the desert] of the Negev," she said. "We really lacked everything."

Another French LFI MP, François Piquemal, also denounced "the sequences of humiliation" suffered after their arrest.

"We saw no lawyer, no doctor, no right to leave, no shower," he stressed.

Humanitarian aid

Among those deported are nationals of Greece, Italy, France, Ireland, Sweden, Poland, Germany, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Austria, Luxembourg, Finland, Denmark, Slovakia, Switzerland, Norway, the United Kingdom, Serbia and the United States, according to the Israeli Foreign Ministry.

The Global Sumud flotilla aimed to break the blockade imposed by Israel on the Gaza Strip and deliver humanitarian aid to the Palestinian territory.

The fifty or so boats that made up the boat were boarded off the coast of Egypt and the Gaza Strip between 1 and 3 October, illegally according to the organisers and Amnesty International.

Israel says the boats violated a no-go zone. The Israeli Foreign Ministry said on Monday evening on X that it had discovered "barely 2 tons [of humanitarian aid] spread over 42 ships," which "represents less than a tenth of the contents of a single truck of humanitarian aid."

According to the Israeli police, more than 470 people on board the flotilla boats were arrested. The evictions began on Oct. 2.

Some 138 participants remain in detention in Israel, the Israeli Foreign Ministry told AFP.

Among them were 13 Brazilians, three of whom had started a hunger strike, Lara Souza, spokeswoman for the Brazilian delegation in the flotilla, told AFP.

Brazilian President Lula called for their release and demanded on Monday on X that this "absurd situation end as soon as possible," deploring that Israel had "violated international law" and "continues to commit violations by keeping them in detention."

The war was unleashed in Gaza by Israel in retaliation for the unprecedented attack by the Palestinian movement Hamas on Israeli soil just two years ago, on Oct. 7, 2023.