(Adnkronos) – All participants in the Gaza aid flotilla intercepted by Israeli forces off Cyprus on Tuesday and detained at Israel’s port of Ashdod were on Wednesday being taken from Ketziot prison to the southern coastal city of Eilat’s airport to board Turkish charter flights, Italy’s foreign ministry said in a statement.
Embassy officials in Tel Aviv assisted the Italian Global Sumud Flotilla activists during their detention at Ketziot and are also set to assist the activists at the airport, the statement said.
Israel’s ambassador Jonathan Peled was summoned to the foreign ministry on Wednesday. At the meeting, the ministry’s secretary-general Riccardo Guariglia conveyed Italy’s condemnation of Israel’s far-right police minister Itamar Ben-Gvir’s videoed taunting of the unarmed, non-violent activists, who were who were forced to kneel blinfolded with the their hands zip-tied behind their backs at an outdoor port facility.
Guariglia also demanded the immediate release and repatriation of the detained Italian activists (originally 29 but two – an MP and a journalist – were freed at flown home late Tuesday ahead of the others) and according to the foreign ministry.
Guariglia underlined the gravity of the aid flotilla’s interception in international waters, during which Israeli forces shot at several of the flotillas 50 boats according to video footage and flotilla organisers.
All of the flotilla’s vessels were seized with 428 participants from more than 40 countries, according to the Global Sumud Flotilla, which set sail from Turkey earlier this week.
The detention and taunting of the activists by Ben-Gvir sparked an international outcry with France, Canada, Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands also summoning their top Israeli diplomats in their countries.
Israel’s premier Benjamin Netanyahu and foreign minister Gideon Saar also criticised Ben-Gvir and US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, said he “betrayed the dignity of his nation.”
