Mondo
The first to arrive at Fiumicino this morning were Il Fatto Quotidiano correspondent Alessandro Mantovani and Five Star Movement MP Dario Carotenuto, both aboard the Global Sumud Flotilla when they were deported from Israel along with 430 other activists. During the night they stopped in Athens, where, thanks to a phone provided by the Italian embassy, Mantovani was able to reach his family and the Il Fatto editorial team — and begin recounting what had happened, from the first moments of the boarding of the Kasr-I Sadabad, the vessel he shared with Carotenuto, through to their return.
His account confirms not only the brutality of the treatment endured by the activists — as evidenced by images that circulated worldwide yesterday — but also that several were subjected to direct violence, as reported the previous evening by lawyers for the Global Sumud Flotilla. “We were among the last to be boarded,” Mantovani recounts. “Israeli forces fired several shots at our boat — I don’t know what kind of ammunition — to force us to the bow. Once detained, we were taken by corvette to a second ship being used as a prison. There we were chained and handcuffed. I was stripped, my glasses were thrown away, and I was left in my swimsuit. We were beaten and kicked — and we got off lightly compared to others. I could hear activists screaming; some almost certainly suffered broken ribs. On that second vessel, almost everyone who arrived — around 180 of us — was beaten.”
