A second group of Spaniards belonging to the has landed at the Adolfo Suárez-Barajas airport on Monday, after eleven o’clock at night. They add up to. Israeli authorities deported on Monday to Athens to 27 Spaniards. From there, an A400M plane from the Spanish Army transferred several of them to Madrid, while two other commercial aircraft transported two groups to Barcelona and Bilbao. In total, there are already 48 Spaniards who have returned (21 on Sunday and 27 on Monday). But activist Reyes Rico is still held in Israel, accused of having bitten a prison official on Sunday. Rico will have to appear on Wednesday before the Israeli police.
This was waiting for a hundred people with a handkerchief, banners and Palestinian flags in Madrid. “They have stolen all our belongings, they have hit us, they have humiliated us, they have tortured us with different sibylin techniques,” said Simón Vidal, one of the newcomers.
The scene passed in parallel, the city from which that flotilla left. Among the passengers who landed there was the deputy of the Cup Pilar Castillejo and the member of the National Secretariat of the same party Adrià Plazas. Castillejo has advanced that the Global Sumud Flotilla will undertake “legal actions” for the treatment received. “The Israel Zionist government has kidnapped us,” he denounced. “There are hunger strike people who will not end it until Reyes is back here,” he added in reference to the Spanish who is still retained.
In Madrid, Sofía Buchó has indicated that she is one of the last people who saw Reyes Rico. According to him, they were in the same cell, which they also shared with, when Israeli officials took her out of there grabbing her hair and dragging her on the ground. Since then, they have not had more news about Rico.
Another man, who has preferred not to identify, said they were tortured by spending them thirst. “Today they have had us for two hours in vans in the sun simply so that we were so thirsty and then offer water bottles with cameras to show their humanity with us. The vast majority of people have denied those bottles of water,” he says.
The others said they have not allowed them to sleep just during the four nights that have been retained. They explained that when they managed to reconcile the dream entered military shouting and pointed them with long weapons. Other times they made a count, to voices, to verify that everything was in place. Others simply moved them from one cell to another.
Simón Vidal, one of the activists, has criticized from the Madrid airport to the government for sending a military ship to escort the humanitarian mission. “What the Government has to do is not bring military ships to protect a civil flotilla that is opening a peaceful humanitarian corridor. What they have to do is use those military, economic and social resources to open a stable humanitarian corridor in Gaza and stop this genocide.”
The tension was increasing at the door six of departures from terminal 2 of the Madrid airport as the landing time approached. During the last two hours that have passed until the plane with the repatriated has arrived, more than a hundred travelers who have encountered activists, relatives of the detainees, journalists, songs in favor of Palestine, sentences to Israel, banners and flags have traveled through the place. Some have shown their support with a gesture, raising their thumb or accompanying the applause.
The plane has touched earth a few minutes after eleven o’clock at night, but its passengers have remained for almost an hour in the waiting room of the airport along with some relatives who have been able to pass. On the other side of the door, the situation was chaotic. The National Police opened a hall so that other newly arrived travelers could leave. Everyone wanted to be in the front row.
