By IRNA,
London : Released British activists have returned to the UK speaking of the “horrors” of Israel’s massacre in international waters of passengers aboard the Gaza Freedom Flotilla.
“The last 72 hours have been the most harrowing in my life,” said director of campaigns and operations at the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Sarah Colborne, who was a passenger on the Mavi Marmara, the main ship in the convoy.
“Even for an experienced campaigner like myself, nothing prepared me for the barbaric onslaught by the Israeli army on a boat of unarmed peace activists with a cargo of humanitarian aid,” Colborne said.
“There are images from Monday’s bloody attack that will haunt me for the rest of my life,” she said, relating the dead bodies and critical injured passengers she saw as the Israeli commandoes cuffed everyone moving with cable ties, even medics.
“There was live ammunition flying around and I could hear the sounds of the bullets flying and the whirr of the helicopter blades as people were dropped down onto the roof. What I saw was guns being used by the Israelis on unarmed civilians.”
Colborne said that it was not until nearly two hours after Tannoy calls were broadcast appealing for help to evacuate the critically injured and for emergency medical assistance that the Israelis started allowing people off.
“We were kidnapped, we were deprived of our liberty and our belongings. People were illegally held against their will, taken to Israel from international waters. In terms of treatment, in terms of our basic rights they were completely and totally violated,” she said.
British journalist Hassan Ghani, who was also on board the Mavi Marmara, further related how Israeli commandos had carried out a “brutal” assault on the flotilla as it attempted to take aid to Gaza.
Passengers tried to use “used sticks, chairs, anything to stop these solders who were coming down with machine guns and tasers and firing rubber bullets and later on using live ammunition on civilians,” Ghani said.
“We knew Israel would do some sort of action, but we thought they would perhaps just try to scare us and then allow us through,” told BBC Radio Scotland.
“We didn’t expect a ship with 32 different nationalities on board, with aid from 50 different countries on board, would be attacked in such a brutal manner,” the 25-year-old journalist from Glasgow said.
Speaking from Turkey, he said Israeli commandoes first began by “throwing stun grenades on to the deck of the ship when people were in the middle of morning prayers.”
“Then the Israelis used helicopters to drop people onto roof and there was scuffles on the roof. The Israeli solders had already opened fire on the ship, so people were grabbing anything they could to stop the attack in international waters.”
His overriding memory was “of those nine people who were killed, all of them Turkish nationals, trying to stop the Israeli forces from launching their armed attack on this humanitarian civilian vessel.”
“They had no weapons, they used their bodies and as a result they paid a fatal price. We saw the funeral of those people yesterday,” he said.
Colborne said that for all the horrors of the last few days, she hoped “the horrific deaths of the people will not be in vain,” but will act as a “wake-up call internationally, including our own government, that the siege on Gaza must end.”
“It is illegal, inhumane and immoral. Israel has been used to acting with impunity. That situation has changed now. We can’t sit by and watch Israel violate international law every day. We want the British government to take action,” she said.