An approach with firearms pointing directly at the headmore than 40 hours in a “floating concentration camp” with 180 people “overcrowded” and random beatings to intimidate them are some of the experiences narrated by those who traveled in the Global Sumud Fleet intercepted by Israel in international waters near Greece.
“The day after they kidnapped us, a group of soldiers went up and began to put on a show by firing gunshots and captured two of our companions. We didn’t know anything about it until we arrived in Greece, when we saw that one of them was seriously beaten, had bruises on his head and was fainting,” ‘Kurdo’, one of the Spaniards who was traveling in the Global Sumud Flotilla, tells EFE.
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Their boat, like the other 21 vessels, was attacked by surprise on the night of April 29 to 30, 60 miles from Crete with the collaboration of the Greek Government by Israeli soldiers who boarded them in international waters in a violent manner, “armed to the teeth, pointing lasers and threatening violence.”
The Spanish professor Salim Malla relates a similar experience: they approached them with firearms, directly seeing the laser pointers in their heads, they had them kneel with their hands on their heads and they took them to the improvised prison ship.
Coming from Greece, Malla recounted this Monday, upon his arrival at Loiu airport, in the Basque Country (Spain), the actions of the Israeli army after which a total of 22 ships of the Flotilla have been destroyed and are “adrift.”
The vessels of the Global Sumud Flotilla, in an archive photograph. Photo: EFE/Marta Pérez
The last boats, Kurdo denounces, were left with the engine and sails destroyed and with the crew on board “adrift”, but 180 people were taken to a boat that the Israeli army converted “into an improvised prison” where they were “overcrowded” and “in very bad conditions, “practically on bread and water” and with “intermittent attacks by the soldiers” until they were taken to Crete.
The sailors – kidnapped, as Kurdish calls themselves – had to spend the night between containers surrounded by concertina wires and barbed wire in this improvised prison – which Malla describes as a “floating concentration camp” – suffering from cold, hunger and sleep deprivation.
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“The departure of the ship was very hard,” continues the activist from Extremadura with Palestine, as a group of activists began to carry out “non-violent resistance to pressure for the release of the companions who were separated from the rest!”, he says, referring to the Palestinian-Spanish activist Saif Abukeshek and his Brazilian companion Thiago Ávila, who have been taken to Israel.
“There were quite a few attacks and injuries, some serious,” says Kurdo, who reports that a total of 30 members of the Global Sumud Flotilla were hospitalized and six were admitted for various traumas, dislocations and a young man with six broken ribs and problems breathing.
Now the flotilla activists fear for their colleagues detained in Israel, especially for Abukeshek, who, being Palestinian, “could be given the death penalty” that Parliament has just approved.
Dozens of people have gathered in Pamplona, called by the Yala Nafarroa platform with Palestine, to denounce the “clear violation of International Law” carried out by Israel with two members of the flotilla carrying humanitarian aid and who have been “kidnapped.” Photo: EFE/Villar López
Yesterday, justice extended the detention of these members of the flotilla for two days, whom a prosecutor accuses of crimes such as “collaborating with the enemy in times of war, contacting a foreign agent, belonging to a terrorist organization and providing services to it, and transferring assets to a terrorist organization.”
The 33 vessels of the Global Sumud Flotilla that were not intercepted are in Crete waiting for a storm to pass and for the Greek Executive to give them permission to leave. “Six more ships intend to join and another 16 continue from Türkiye,” Malla said.
Although, according to Kurdo, they still do not know which direction the ships are going to take and if they will try to continue the mission of breaking the Israeli blockade on the strip.
