Israel to deport around 170 detained Gaza aid flotilla activists: Rights center

ISTANBUL 

Israel will on Monday deport around 170 activists detained after Israeli forces attacked the Gaza-bound Global Sumud Flotilla, according to the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, Adalah. 

Adalah said in a statement late Sunday that the Israel Prison Service (IPS) informed its lawyers of plans to deport the activists without providing details, including names, nationalities or destinations. 

Israel has deported around 170 Gaza flotilla participants over the past few days, most to Istanbul, with smaller groups sent to Italy and Spain, it added. 

Adalah said its attorneys were denied access to activists during several visits Saturday, while medicines were allowed into the prison following legal interventions and visits by foreign embassy representatives, who assessed the activists’ health. 

The rights center said it is monitoring the conditions of activists, demanding lawyer access despite IPS restrictions and ensuring their rights are protected until deportation.

Adalah said the IPS allowed only a 30-minute visit, during which lawyers met with all 11 Tunisian participants on hunger strike, who reported that many other activists were also refusing food.

The activists told lawyers that “widespread assaults and violence” occurred during their transfer from the port of Ashdod to Ketziot Prison in the Negev desert and in the early days of their detention, it said.

“Current conditions inside the prison are described as relatively stable, with continued concern over the health of the hunger strikers and denial of adequate medical care,” Adalah noted.

Israeli naval forces attacked and seized vessels of the Global Sumud Flotilla on Wednesday and detained more than 470 activists from over 50 countries.

The flotilla had been attempting to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza and challenge Israel’s blockade of the enclave.

Israel has maintained the blockade on Gaza, home to nearly 2.4 million people, for almost 18 years.

Since October 2023, Israeli bombardments have killed more than 67,000 Palestinians in the enclave, most of them women and children, and rendered it all but uninhabitable.

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