ACTIVISTS BEATEN BY ISRAELI SOLDIERS
Humanitarian mission members tasered, shot at, says MyCARE CEO
ACTIVISTS on board the humanitarian aid vessel Al Awda were allegedly tasered, beaten and shot at by Israeli soldiers. Humanitarian Care Malaysia (MyCARE) chief executive officer Kamarul Zaman Shaharul Anwar said according to the ship’s captain, Zohar Chamberlain Regev, Israeli soldiers used violence against several mission members while they were being held.
Regev claimed the soldiers hit members who refused to cooperate when asked to fire up the ship’s engine.
“The latest information received is that three more ‘Al Awda’ mission members have been freed.
“Two of them are Al-Jazeera reporters Merouane Metidji and Abdelmounim El Amrani and an American activist Joe Meadors.
“Malaysia’s sole representative, Associate Professor Dr Mohd Afandi Salleh, is being held at the Givon prison in Israel and we expect his release in a few days,” he said here yesterday.
On July 22, Al Awda, together with two smaller vessels, Huriyyah and Falastine, left the Messina port in Sicily.
They started sailing from Copenhagen, Denmark, on May 22 and had berthed at 28 ports in their journey to provide aid for Palestinians in Gaza.
The Israeli navy was recently quoted as saying that it had stopped a ship of activists trying to break its blockade of the Gaza Strip.
The ship was said to have been rerouted to the nearby city of Ashdod.
The navy was said to have told the passengers that they were “violating the legal naval blockade”, and that if they had humanitarian aid to deliver, there were other ways to get it to Gaza.
The ship was carrying medical supplies worth RM61,000.
Those on board include Norwegian politician Mikkel Gruner, orthopaedic specialist from the United Kingdom Dr Ang Swee Chai and former Norwegian athlete Professor Gerd Von Der Lippe.
It was reported that two mission members who had been released were Regev and former Israeli air force captain Yonathan Shapira.