Israel said it deported on Monday, campaigner Greta Thunberg and another 170 activists from an international flotilla it prevented last week from delivering aid to Gaza, sending them to Greece and Slovakia.
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Earlier, Swiss and Spanish activists from the flotilla said they were subjected to inhumane conditions during their detention by Israeli forces. Monday’s expulsions brought to 341 the total number deported from 479 detained.
Israel’s foreign ministry issued a statement, accompanied by photos of Thunberg at the airport, saying all participants’ legal rights had been upheld, and the only violence involved an activist who bit a female doctor at Israel’s Ketziot prison.
An Israeli foreign ministry spokesperson said Thunberg, a Swedish campaigner primarily for climate change, boarded a plane at Ramon airbase in Israel’s Negev Desert. Israel has dismissed the flotilla as a publicity stunt.
The deportees are citizens of Greece, Italy, France, Ireland, Sweden, Poland, Germany, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Austria, Luxembourg, Finland, Denmark, Slovakia, Switzerland, Norway, the UK, Serbia, and the United States, the foreign ministry said.
Deported activists allege mistreatment