Gaza flotilla members allege beatings and insults in Israeli detention

International activists, journalists and lawyers deported from Israel after attempting to breach the 16-year maritime blockade of Gaza as part of a humanitarian flotilla have alleged being subjected to brutal physical and verbal abuse by Israeli forces during their detention.

The alleged abuses included sleep and medication deprivation, beatings, having automatic rifles pointed at their heads, dogs set upon them, having to sleep on the floor, being subjected to insults and being made to watch footage of the Hamas attacks on Israel on 7 October 2023.

“I was beaten from the moment we entered the port until the very end,” said Saverio Tommasi, an Italian journalist. “Blows to my back, blows to my head – and they [the Israeli soldiers] laughed, laughed at all of it. Anyone who failed to keep their eyes down was punished with a hit to the head.”

Israeli forces intercepted all the boats of the Global Sumud flotilla (GSF), carrying more than 400 people including parliamentarians and the environmental campaigner Greta Thunberg, last week. Most of the people were held at Ketziot, a high-security prison in the Negev desert used primarily to detain Palestinians whom Israel accuses of involvement in terrorist activities.

Israel’s foreign ministry has dismissed all claims of mistreatment of members of the flotilla as “brazen lies”, posting on X on Sunday evening: “All the detainees’ legal rights are fully upheld.”

The national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, has said he was “proud” of the way staff behaved at Ketziot. He said in a statement on the activists: “They should get a good feel for the conditions in Ketziot prison and think twice before they approach Israel again.”

Rafael Borrego, a Spanish activist and lawyer, told Reuters: “At any time that any of us called a police officer, we risked that seven or more fully armed people entered to our cell, as they did on mine, pointing us with weapons at our heads, with dogs ready to attack us, and being dragged to the floor. This happened on a daily basis.”

The Australia and New Zealand branch of the Global Movement to Gaza, part of the flotilla, said the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) had notified the family of one participant that he had reported being assaulted during the interception of his vessel, receiving injuries to his shoulder and ribs.

It said the DFAT had been told the man was later attacked while in prison, slapped in the face, mocked and verbally abused, denied clean water and kept awake as guards shouted at him throughout the night.

Ada Colau, the leftwing former mayor of Barcelona, said on her return to Spain on Sunday night that the prison yard by her cell had been decorated with a huge photograph of a bombed-out Gaza, with a caption in Arabic that read: “Welcome to the new Gaza.”

She said it showed that the jail was “the prison of a fascist state”. She said that when “we asked for a doctor, we were told that that was for humans”.

Lorenzo D’Agostino, an Italian journalist, told the Guardian there were crew members who had urgently needed medication. “The Israelis ignored them,” he said. “When we all protested, they came in wearing riot gear, set dogs on us and aimed the laser sights of their automatic rifles at our heads.”

He added: “When they stripped us of our shirts and of Palestinian symbols like the keffiyeh, they stamped on them forcefully.”

D’Agostino and several other members of the flotilla said Israeli forces appeared to single out Thunberg for harsher treatment than the others. “I saw with my own eyes that they draped an Israeli flag over her while soldiers took selfies with her. Greta is a strong and courageous woman, but during detention she looked deeply shaken,” D’Agostino said.

An email sent by the Swedish foreign ministry and seen by the Guardian confirmed that the activist had been forced “to hold flags” and had been “detained in a cell infested with bedbugs, with too little food and water”.

The Israeli foreign ministry statement said Thunberg “did not complain to the Israeli authorities about any of these ludicrous and baseless allegations – because they never occurred”.

The campaigner will be among more than 70 people of different nationalities to leave Israel on Monday on a flight to Athens.

Israel has so far deported at least 170 of the more than 450 activists it detained. The last of the 49 Spaniards who sailed with the flotilla were expected to fly back to Spain on Monday.

Twenty-seven Greek nationals including a leftwing MP, Peti Perka, were due to return home later on Monday after Athens’ foreign ministry announced it would dispatch a specially chartered plane to southern Israel’s Eilat-Ramon international airport.

Greece’s centre-right government has faced mounting criticism over its hesitation to criticise Israel, with opposition parties and relatives of the activists accusing the prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, of prioritising the two countries’ “strategic alliance”.

The Greek foreign ministry lodged “a strong written protest” on Friday in which it called on Israel “to promptly complete the required procedures [of repatriation] and to respect the rights of the citizens involved”, but opponents noted that it was only issued after complaints of official indifference by the activists’ relatives.

Stopping short of naming Ben-Gvir, who was filmed taunting the activists as they came ashore, the ministry criticised “the unacceptable and inappropriate behaviour of an Israeli minister directed against Greek citizens”.

Meanwhile, a new flotilla that set sail from Turkey is making its way toward Gaza and is about 200 nautical miles from the territory. It is carrying about 250 people including doctors, nurses and journalists on a ferry converted into a floating hospital.