161 Gaza aid flotilla detainees land in Greece

Swedish climate campaigner Greta Thunberg raises her fist upon arrival alongside activists at the arrivals area of Athens International Airport. Photo / Aris Messinis, AFP

Swedish activist Greta Thunberg has landed in Greece alongside scores of fellow campaigners expelled from Israel after trying to ship aid to Gaza, AFP journalists saw.

The 22-year-old climate campaigner was one of hundreds of people who had boarded a flotilla that tried to break through an Israeli blockade of the war-stricken territory, with many complaining on their return to Europe of mistreatment at the hands of the Israeli authorities.

Thunberg and 160 others landed at Athens International Airport, where crowds of activists welcomed them.

She called the Global Sumud Flotilla “the biggest ever attempt to break Israel’s illegal and inhumane siege by sea”.

“That this mission has to exist is a shame,” she added, urging the world to act to prevent Israel’s “genocide” of the Palestinians.

“We are not even seeing the bare minimum from our Governments,” Thunberg said.

Activists unfurled a huge Palestinian flag in the arrivals hall and chanted: “Freedom for Palestine” and “Long live the flotilla!”

Parliamentarian ‘beaten’

One of those landing in Greece, Rima Hassan, a French-Palestinian member of the European Parliament, reported having been hit by Israeli police after the flotilla was intercepted.

“I was beaten by two police officers when they put me in the van,” she told AFP.

Hassan said she and other detainees were kept in groups of up to 15 per cell on mattresses in a high-security Israeli prison.

Yasmin Acar, a member of the flotilla’s steering committee, said the detainees were “treated like animals” and “terrorists”.

“We were physically assaulted, we were deprived of sleep,” Acar said.

“We did not have any clean water. The first 48 hours, there was no food, no water at all.”

Israel has rejected the accusations of mistreatment as untrue.

The Greek foreign ministry said the “special repatriation flight” that landed in Athens carried 27 Greeks and 134 other nationals from 15 European countries.

Israel’s foreign ministry said on Monday it had deported 171 activists overall to Greece and Slovakia.

Bratislava’s foreign ministry confirmed that one Slovak had returned to the central European country, along with nine other people from the Netherlands, Canada and the United States.

The flotilla departed from Barcelona in Spain in early September and was intercepted by the Israeli navy off Egypt last week.

Israel has branded the flotilla an offshoot of Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist movement that it is battling to destroy in Gaza.

It said the boats violated a prohibited zone and that little humanitarian aid was found on board the vessels.

Israeli police said more than 470 people aboard the flotilla boats were arrested.

Israel’s foreign ministry told AFP that 138 flotilla participants remained in detention in Israel.

Thirteen Brazilians are among them, including three who are holding a hunger strike, a spokeswoman for the Brazilian delegation in the flotilla, Lara Souza, told AFP.

Brazilian President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva demanded in a post on X that this “absurd situation end as soon as possible” and the Brazilians be released.

He said that Israel had “violated international law” by intercepting the flotilla “and it continues to commit violations by keeping them detained”.

– Agence France-Presse