“We were in different sections of the jail, depending on which ship we traveled with. They were shouting and acting like savages while arresting us. They wanted us to sign a document that would make all that was happening legal. Some of the people were tortured in prison, not all. But when they were giving us the food we had to eat with fingers, because there was no cutlery. There wasn’t toilet paper in the toilets.”, narrated for Sky TV the journalist Aris Hadzistefanou who is one of the 31 Greeks that came back from Israel.
Aris Hadzistfanou – journalist of Sky and Dimitris Plionis were on the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara while the rest of the Greeks included in the humanitarian mission were on Sfendoni ship. “We saw how the commandos, among whom there were women, got on the deck by ropes. Some of the people on the ship gripped the broom handles and made slings to protect themselves, because they attacked us. At the beginning we thought they shot blank cartridges but then I saw the hole on the forehead of a man we met an hour ago and even took a picture together. I saw the red point of the laser at my feet and realized that everything is really happening” says Aris Hadzistfanou for SKY.
“My colleague Dimitrsi Plionis and I were on the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara. The commandos arrested and coughed all of us. At first we knew about 8 victims and after a while we heard of 18 murdered people. Then I really got scared, because we thought they attacked the Greek ship. They took everything we had. I filmed how the commandos shot a man who was waving a white flag.”
The Greeks that took part in the humanitarian mission “Free Gaza” landed at the military airport in Elvzina this morning at 3:01a.m. The plane C-130 transported 31 Greeks, 3 Frenchmen and 1 American who the Israelis freed. The return wasn’t smooth, because at 11:35 p.m. the plane already on the flight strip and ready to fly was notified from the control tower that it had to come back to the base. The Greek plane got permission to fly from Ben Gurion airport in Israel after an hour.
While arrested, the Greek people were not allowed to take their medicines for two days. Three of the six Greeks that came back among the first returns are around 50 years old and had serious diseases. Subsequently, the Israel authorities gave them permission to take the medicines having in mind that the average age of the people on the Sfendoni ship was over 40 years.
The Greek activists who were arrested in Tuesday morning and freed yesterday accused in a letter from the jail the Israel commandos of the violence, the use of bullets, the beating, electrocution and injuring three people from the Greek mission.
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