An Italian activist who was part of the Gaza aid flotilla and subsequently detained by Israel has described allegations of being mistreated and humiliated while in Israeli custody, with little access to legal assistance.
Lorenzo D’Agostino is one of a number of flotilla participants deported by Israel who have claimed they were treated poorly while they were detained. Israel has strongly denied allegations of mistreating the group.
In an interview with CNN, D’Agostino described being forced to sit or kneel on concrete in front of an Israeli flag for hours at a time, being left in cold temperatures with little clothing, having his belongings seized, mocked and destroyed and having his wrists bound tightly.
“We were shocked by the level of humiliation and gratuitous cruelty that these people used on us,” he said.
“The way we were treated was … pushing the mistreatment and the humiliation to the limit that they could afford,” D’Agostino said. He said that he believes that because he is from Italy – a traditional ally of Israel – Israeli guards “knew that they couldn’t harm us physically” or they would face backlash.
“People coming from countries that are not allied (with Israel) were harmed physically,” he said. “I was sharing my cell with a Turkish citizen (another activist) whose arm was broken and he was left without painkillers for two days.”
In a social media post on Sunday, Israel’s foreign ministry said that claims regarding the mistreatment of the activists are “brazen lies,” and that “all the detainees’ legal rights are fully upheld.”
D’Agostino is one of some 450 activists, including climate campaigner Greta Thunberg, who was arrested last week aboard the Global Sumud Flotilla, a coalition of more than 40 humanitarian aid vessels carrying food, water and medicine towards Gaza. Those detained between Wednesday and Friday were brought to Israel, where many remain in prison.
The flotilla, which set sail in late August and September, was the latest attempt by activists to break the years long Israeli blockade of the Palestinian territory by sea. Israel claims that the blockade is legal and has called the flotilla a provocation.
Thunberg, one of the most prominent figures onboard the flotilla, was allegedly forced to kneel on concrete in front of an Israeli flag, and was constantly surrounded by other Israeli flags while in custody, D’Agostino said.
Police and soldiers would often take pictures of her with the flags, he added. This claim was repeated by Lubna Tuma, a legal counsel for the Adalah Legal Centre representing the activists, who said that Thunberg, alongside one other detainee, was “separated from the others and forced to have pictures with the Israeli flag as an act of humiliation.”
On Monday afternoon, Israel’s foreign ministry said that Thunberg had also been deported alongside 170 other flotilla participants.
Thunberg later arrived at Athens International Airport, where she told crowds of supporters that she could “talk for a very, very long time about our mistreatment and abuses in our imprisonment,” before adding: “But that is not the story.”
“What happened here was that Israel, while continuing to worsen and escalate their genocide and mass destruction … they once again violated international law by preventing humanitarian aid from getting into Gaza while people are being starved,” she said.
The Israeli government has maintained it is conducting the war in Gaza in accordance with international law, firmly denying accusations of genocide.
While D’Agostino was in custody, he said Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir paid a visit to the flotilla participants, where he called them “terrorists” and “supporters of the killers,” video showed.
The border guards “felt compelled to be especially cruel in front of their minister,” D’Agostino said, saying that his hands were bound so tightly when Ben Gvir was visiting that it felt like the blood circulation to them was nearly cut off.
The same day, Ben Gvir criticized Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for deporting the flotilla activists.
“The Prime Minister’s decision to allow the terror supporters on the flotilla to return to their countries is fundamentally mistaken,” he said in a post on X.
“I believe they must be kept here in an Israeli prison for several months, so they can breathe the air of the terrorists’ wing. After all, it cannot be that the Prime Minister keeps sending them back again and again and again to their countries – and this very release is what causes them to return over and over and over,” Ben Gvir continued.
Other deported activists gave similar accounts of their detentions, in what the lawyer from the Adalah Legal Centre representing the activists called a “series of violations.” Goretti Sarasibar, who was deported from Tel Aviv on Sunday, told Reuters that, after being released from their cells, the activists were forced to watch images of Hamas’ October 7 attacks on Israel, when militants killed about 1,200 Israelis and took 250 hostages.
“They didn’t give us food all day,” he said, adding: “Now we are super happy eating, as we were starving.”
Dutch activist Marco Tesh recounted being unable to breathe at one point “because they put something to my face and they tied my hands to my back.”
Fellow deportee Rafael Borrego showed the handcuff marks on his wrists and described the jail conditions.
“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,” he told Reuters. “This happened on a daily basis.”
In a post on X Monday, Israel’s foreign ministry again denied that any of the flotilla participants had been mistreated in detention.
“All the legal rights of the participants in this PR stunt were and will continue to be fully upheld,” reads the statement.
“The lies they are spreading are part of their pre-planned fake news campaign,” it said. “Don’t believe the fake news they are spreading.”
CNN’s Abeer Salman, Billy Stockwell, Eugenia Yosef, Tal Shalev and Kara Fox contributed reporting.
