Israel has deported Swedish activist Greta Thunberg and three others, after seizing the Madleen, the Gaza-bound humanitarian aid ship on which Thunberg was sailing in a crew of 12.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Thunberg flew out of Tel Aviv early on Tuesday, bound for Sweden via France, and released her photos on the flight. Upon arriving in Paris’s Roissy-Charles de Gaulle Airport, Thunberg told reporters she and her companions had been “kidnapped in international waters”.
Al Jazeera’s Natacha Butler, who was among the journalists interviewing Thunberg at the Paris airport, said, “She clearly looked very tired and was in the same clothes she was wearing when she was detained … This has been quite a difficult number of hours for her.”
While Thunberg said she was “OK”, she described being treated in a “dehumanising way” by Israeli authorities, said Butler. However, she emphasised that her brief detention was nothing compared with what Palestinians regularly endure under Israeli occupation, Butler added.
According to the legal rights group Adalah, which is representing Thunberg and the other activists and a journalist who sailed in the Madleen vessel towards Gaza, she was among four crew members who accepted deportation.
Omar Faiad, Al Jazeera Mubasher reporter, who was also on the Madleen and deported by Israel, said after his arrival in Paris: “We were incarcerated for three consecutive days, denied the right to contact anybody, even lawyers … We were then coerced to sign a bunch of documents. None of us know the content of these documents. The French consul advised me to sign a paper in order to be able to fly, so I did.”
