Israel to Release Kidnapped Flotilla Activists

Israel has said it will release illegally detained flotilla activists Saif Abukeshek and Thiago Ávila after ten days of ‘torture’.

Shin Bet, Israel’s intelligence agency, told the activists’ legal team they will be released to immigration authorities today. They are likely to be deported next week.

Ávila, who is Brazilian, and Spanish-Swedish national Abukeshek, who is of Palestinian origin, were abducted in international waters near Greece on 30 April.

For more than a week, the two activists have been brutally beaten, subjected to “repeated interrogations lasting up to eight hours” and threatened with murder, lawyers and diplomats have said. Both are being held in solitary confinement under relentless bright light. Ávila was not able to attend the wake of his mother, who died of a heart attack on Tuesday, while he was detained.

Both men are on hunger strike and Abukeshek has been refusing water since Wednesday, raising serious fears he might not survive until his next scheduled hearing on Sunday.

On Wednesday, the United Nations demanded the immediate release of the two activists, calling for an investigation into the “disturbing accounts of severe mistreatment”.

Before that, eleven nations, including Spain, Brazil, Turkey and South Africa, released a joint statement condemning their detention as a “flagrant violation of international humanitarian law”.

Responding to the news of their release on Saturday, the Global Sumud Flotilla said it was a “victory for solidarity”.

“The world has risen once again against the blatant illegal state of affairs, amounting in public, political and diplomatic pressure to demand their release.”