Swedish activist Greta Thunberg said last night that she and other detainees from the Gaza flotilla were tortured in the Israeli prison where they were being held, Reuters reported, BTA reported.
Thunberg said at a press conference in Stockholm that she and the other detainees were "kidnapped and tortured" by the Israeli army. She declined to give further details, but added that she had no access to clean water and that other detainees were denied access to life-saving medicines.
“Personally, I don't want to share what I went through because I don't want it to be a headline in the media and say, “Greta was tortured,” because that's not the story,” Thunberg said, adding that what the detainees on the Gaza flotilla were subjected to pales in comparison to what people in Gaza experience every day.
The Israeli Foreign Ministry has repeatedly denied that the detainees were mistreated. “All detainees... had access to water, food and toilets; "They were not denied access to a lawyer and all their legal rights were fully respected," a foreign ministry spokesman said last week.
Thunberg was part of a flotilla that attempted to reach Gaza to deliver humanitarian aid and draw attention to the plight of the enclave, where most residents have been driven from their homes and where the United Nations says famine is widespread.
Thunberg was detained along with 478 others on the flotilla and expelled from Israel on Monday. Israel says reports of a famine in Gaza are exaggerated and has called the flotilla a publicity stunt benefiting the Palestinian militant group Hamas. Thunberg was detained in June during a similar attempt to break Israel's naval blockade of Gaza.