The Minister of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation, José Manuel Albares, indicated this Thursday that “everything indicates” that Israel is preparing to deport the detained Gaza flotilla activists via Turkey, among whom there would be more than 40 Spaniards, in the next few hours.
In statements to ‘La Hora de la 1’, the minister explained that the Spanish consul has informed him that the detained Spaniards, of whom there is still no official number although they estimate that there would be 44, were already being transferred to the Ramon airport, along with the rest of the activists to, “as everything indicates, be deported via Turkey at 3:00 p.m.”
However, the minister wanted to show caution, insisting that “it has not yet been officially confirmed.” “They are in a detention center and that is what everything indicates is going to happen,” he added.
However, shortly after, a spokesperson for the Freedom Flotilla, one of the organizations that has promoted the initiative, indicated that the Spanish consul told them that “they are going to be deported today” to Turkey on planes chartered by the Turkish Government and that since yesterday they have been held in the Kitzot prison.
Albares: “They have been illegally detained in international waters, where no Israeli agent has jurisdiction”
On the other hand, Albares has taken the opportunity to make it clear to both the detainees and their families that they have all his support, that of the Ministry, the Embassy and that of the consul, who until now has not been able to visit them although he has requested it, and that they enjoy all diplomatic and consular protection.
Likewise, he has indicated that the day before he summoned the Israeli chargé d’affaires, Dana Erlich, and proceeded to deliver “a note verbale, which is the most formal protest document there is”, just as another has been sent to the Israeli Foreign Ministry demanding the immediate release of the detainees.
“These Spaniards who have been illegally detained in international waters, where no Israeli agent has any jurisdiction over any Spanish citizen,” he stressed, ensuring that he holds the Israeli authorities “directly responsible for anything that may happen to them.”
“We are going to protect them against any eventuality and of course we are also going to protect them against any slander that links them to terrorist groups,” he assured, insisting that “they are peaceful citizens and what they are demanding is what any decent State like Spain does demands.” “Gazatians have the right to humanitarian aid, medical care, hospital care and education, like any human being on the planet,” he concluded.
Albares has also referred to the video spread on social networks by the ultra-Israeli minister Itamar Ben Gvir, in which he scolds the detainees upon their arrival at the port of Ashdod and they are seen kneeling and with their faces on the ground.
“We are going to continue insisting that the Israeli minister who appeared yesterday in that hateful, inhuman, monstrous video, not only cannot enter Spain”, where he already has an entry ban like the minister Bezalel Smotrich, “but that he cannot enter the entire European Union.”
