Gaza boat activists ‘should have been treated with dignity’, say colleagues

Updated 4.10pm 

Volunteers taken off the Gaza aid ship that was targeted in a drones attack last week should have been treated better by Maltese authorities, their colleagues have said.

Retired US Army Colonel Mary Ann Wright and Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FFC) press officer Yasemin Acar described brusque treatment from the Maltese authorities as six of their colleagues left the ship by AFM patrol boat in international waters and were transferred under police escort directly to the airport for a flight home to Turkey on Monday.  They were initially not allowed to meet other activists when they reached land.

They also questioned why there appeared to be a lack of international condemnation of Friday's attack, which they described as “normalising” breaches of international law. 

In FFC video footage taken at the airport and released on Instagram, one of them is heard saying, "there were really some strange things going on".

Another activist said: "We were the ones who got bombed but they are acting like we are the ones who bombed someone”.

Commenting on her fellow activists’ treatment, Wright agreed, telling Times of Malta, “one would have thought it would have been with a little more dignity”.

"I don't think they were handcuffed or anything like that, but they were just treated with a little bit of lack of respect”, she said. “Considering that a boat (the Conscience) has been bombed, you would think there'd be a little more sympathy.”

Wright clarified that while the Turkish activists had left Malta, they had not been deported. They had officially entered and exited the country during their brief stop before flying home.

Although FFC members asked to meet the disembarked activists upon their reaching Malta, they were told, “No, they're going directly from the boat to the airport. And you will not see them,” she said.

Despite the refusal, the departing activists briefly met with colleagues at Malta International Airport before flying home, however.

“We said we'd like to have a boat that goes out to accompany the naval vessel back and that was a big fat ‘no’, said Wright, explaining the team had instead tracked the disembarked activists using live location tracking.

She explained that the request for the activists to disembark had come from the Turkish government.

Did the activists consider refusing?

“This is a very delicate thing,” she said, stressing that the Conscience and two other vessels had been quarantined by the Turkish government for over a year – in what the group thinks was due to pressure from Israel, which it has blamed for the attack.

Addressing doubts about the ship's cargo, Wright said the ship had been "thoroughly" inspected by port authorities before leaving Tunisia, its last call before heading to Malta.

Israel has not claimed responsibility for the suspected drone attack on the FFC vessel and has not responded to requests for comment.

Suspicions

Voicing suspicions that Malta may have played a role in the suspected attack, the former colonel questioned why the government had offered to pay for repairs to the vessel, suggesting “intrigue” between the Maltese and Israeli governments.

“It's the oddest thing in the world, why the Maltese government offered to repair it and supposedly pay for it... why in the world would they do that?”

“I'm just guessing it's an acknowledgement there was something that happened here that they're a little bit ashamed of,” she said.

The government has rebuffed online tracking data, independently confirmed by Times of Malta, showing an Israeli military aircraft spending around three hours in Malta-controlled airspace shortly before the attack.

The Freedom Flotilla Coalition has called for an investigation into the suspected attack. Photo: FFC.

Stressing her professional experience firmly led her to believe Israel was responsible, she said “the pulling of the [Palau] flag (under which the ship was registered) and then the bombing of the ship ... could not have happened without lots of planning”.

Wright spent 29 years in the US army and served for 16 years as a diplomat in the state department.

Responding to doubts about the incident, with the cause of the fires onboard not yet officially confirmed, Wright said, “just look at the history, we never blow up our own ships.”

She reiterated the group’s calls Tuesday for an investigation into the incident, with Acar explaining the FFC had sent footage and photographs of the damaged vessel to London-based research agency Forensic Architecture. 

'No condemnation'

Turning to the international reaction to the incident onboard the Conscience, Acar said she believed Gaza was being treated differently to other conflicts like Ukraine.

"If this was the case of Ukraine – if there was a humanitarian vessel going towards Ukraine, how fast would the world react?”

Stressing that there had been “no condemnation, including [from] Malta” of the suspected attack, she asked why the incident had not provoked a stronger reaction.

“This was in the heart of Europe. And if Israel has this kind of impunity to come to Europe and attack civilians, what does that mean to us in Europe?”

"This is very dangerous and if we don't react as Europe, then we normalise breaching international law”.