Reyes Rigo, the only Spaniard from the Sumud Global Flotilla who continues to be held in Israel, will return to Spain this Saturday after having reached an agreement with the Prosecutor’s Office of the court in the southern city of Beersheba. The Public Ministry this Friday, which raised fears that his release would be complicated.
In exchange for pleading guilty to two crimes of assault against a prison officer and paying a fine for the equivalent of about 2,600 euros, this 56-year-old Mallorcan will be released and subsequently expelled from the country. Suhad Bishara, director of the NGO that has provided him legal assistance, Adalah, has confirmed his deportation to EL PAÍS. He has also assured that it is still unknown whether the activist will return to Spain on a flight from Tel Aviv, or will be sent by land to neighboring Jordan, from where she should then take the plane.
The Israeli authorities had maintained throughout this week that Rigo had been detained in Israel – while the rest of the Spaniards (48) in the flotilla were returned to Spain – for having bitten a prison officer (a nurse) last Sunday, an accusation that the activist has always denied. However, the assault charges finally filed against her this Friday do not refer to any bite, but only to an alleged scratch.
The indictment states that Rigo “attacked the guard [la funcionaria] “grabbing her by the left hand and digging his nails into her flesh” in the Ketziot maximum security prison, according to the text reported by different Israeli newspapers. All the activists of the flotilla were imprisoned in that prison in the Negev desert.
Rigo’s version is that he acted in self-defense and that of another activist when a struggle occurred in which he stood between the prison guards and that fellow member of the flotilla when the officials were attacking her.
Other participants in the Global Sumud, raided by the Israeli Navy on October 8, have corroborated Rigo’s version by describing how that Sunday several prison guards took the activist out of a cell “with extreme violence” by grabbing her by the hair and dragging her along the floor. She was then taken to another cell where she was confined alone, as Alejandra Martínez Velasco, another Mallorcan who also participated in that flotilla, whose objective was to deliver humanitarian aid in Gaza, explained after landing at the Madrid-Barajas airport on Monday.
Faced with these conflicting versions, Adalah’s lawyer who represents Rigo, Hay Abu Gharara, asked the judge that the police provide the images of the incident, which should have been recorded on the prison cameras. The representative of the Israeli police who testified against the activist assured that that security body did not have those videos and that they had not even seen them.
That could have been one of the keys to the resolution of the case. Thanks to the agreement by which Rigo will be expelled to Spain, the Israeli police avoid having to show the images of the incident in court, as the activist’s defense had requested. According to lawyer Abu Gharara, cited by the Israeli press, these videos would have revealed the violence with which prison officials treated the woman.
The rest of the activists, already expelled to their countries of origin – more than 460, including the other 48 Spaniards – physically (such as being forced to remain for hours in painful positions) and psychologically. Some have even described how Israeli security forces officers pointed guns at them and threatened them with dogs. They were also deprived of water, food and medicine.
Eight other Spaniards
Hours before the first hearing in Rigo’s case was held on Wednesday, Israel had raided the ships of a second flotilla that also aimed to reach the coast of Gaza and break the Israeli blockade on humanitarian aid.
On that expedition, about 150 people were traveling, including eight Spaniards who are still held in Israel.
As happened on October 8, when Israel in which Reyes Rigo participated, the boarding of the ships occurred in international waters, in which the right to free navigation governs, according to international law.
If nothing goes wrong, these eight Spaniards will be repatriated to Spain after signing a deportation document in which they acknowledge having tried to enter Israel illegally, an accusation that is not true, since they were sailing towards the territorial waters of Gaza, an occupied Palestinian territory. That document implies a ban on entry into Israel for 10 years.
