Swedish activist Greta Thunberg revealed that she was beaten, humiliated and threatened with being “gassed in a cage” during her stay in Israeli custody, according to a Swedish media outlet. Aftonbladet he reported in an interview published Wednesday.
Greta was one of 450 people aboard the Sumud Global Flotilla, a humanitarian aid mission involving more than 40 ships aimed at delivering food, water and medicine to the Gaza Strip amid Israel’s two-year attack on the besieged enclave.
The boats were intercepted by the Israeli navy on October 1, and Greta and all other activists were arrested and held in Israeli custody. She was released and deported to Greece on October 6.
In her interview, Greta recounted the treatment she received in Israeli custody, which included humiliation, threats of violence and physical beatings.
“She doesn’t want headlines about herself and the torture she says she was subjected to,” Aftonbladet reported.
“That was one of the first things he said the night he returned home, at a press conference in Sergels Torg along with several of the other Swedes who participated in the large Sumud Global Flotilla that attempted to bring emergency aid to Gaza.”
Quoting Greta, the report said: “This is not about me or the others in the flotilla. There are thousands of Palestinians, hundreds of whom are children, who are detained without trial right now, and many of them are likely being tortured.”
“This shows that if Israel, with the entire world watching, can treat a well-known white person with a Swedish passport this way, imagine what they do to Palestinians behind closed doors.”
Greta noted that what the flotilla activists went through is “just a small, small part of what Palestinians have experienced” and described blood-stained bullet holes and messages carved into cell walls by Palestinian prisoners previously held there.
The activist recalled the night they boarded the flotilla, mentioning the chemical agents used by Israel and saying “that she will never again be able to look at a starry sky without thinking about drones.”
“It was very hot down there. We sat there. Those who weren’t watching us walked around the boat, destroying things and throwing everything,” he described.
“After about 20 hours, they arrived at Ashdod, Israel’s largest industrial port, 40 kilometers south of Tel Aviv. A soldier pointed at Greta Thunberg and said, ‘You first, let’s go!'” the publication wrote.
Greta added that she was not allowed to wear her “Free Palestine” T-shirt and was ordered to change. Instead, he put on an orange one with the text “Decolonize.”
“And then I put on my frog hat. When I was about to get off the boat, there was a group of police officers waiting for me,” Greta remembers. “They grab me, throw me to the ground and throw an Israeli flag at me.”
Aftonbladet reported that Greta was dragged to a paved area fenced with iron fences in a “prolonged scene lasting more than six hours,” according to Greta and several flotilla participants.
“It was kind of dystopian,” Greta said. “I saw about 50 people sitting in a row, on their knees, handcuffed and with their foreheads on the ground.
“They dragged me to the opposite side of where the others were sitting, and I had the flag around me the whole time. They hit me and kicked me. Then they ripped off my frog hat, threw it on the ground, stomped on it and kicked it, and kind of threw a tantrum,” he added.
“They very brutally moved me to a corner where they were facing me. ‘A special place for a special lady,’ they said,” Greta explained. “And then they learned lilac hour (little bitch) and’Greta Time‘ (whore Greta) in Swedish, which they repeated all the time.”
Greta added that while the Israeli flag was wrapped around her, the guards would attack her if she touched the flag, even if it was waving towards her. She then described that she was tied “very tightly” with zip ties.
“They took my bag and threw away everything they interpreted as related to Palestine,” she added. “They took each item and looked me in the eyes as they slowly cut them with a knife, while ten people took selfies.”
The activist also described the moment when far-right Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir arrived at the center and verbally abused detainees.
“He shouted, ‘You are terrorists. You want to kill Jewish babies.’ Those who responded to the shouts were taken aside and beaten. They were thrown to the ground and beaten,” Greta recalled. “But I could only see it out of the corner of my eye, because every time I raised my head from the ground, the guard next to me would kick me.”
He then described a “moving scene” to Aftonbladet: “I needed to go to the bathroom and I asked. Then they had to take me to where people were sitting and they saw me. A female member of the Swedish delegation said: ‘We are with you, Greta.’
“Then they took her aside and attacked her. When I continue among the rows of people sitting there, they say ‘Kill me!'” he added, referring to a slang term that means to do something well.
“They say ‘Kill’ because they know it’s my word. And the ones who say kill get hit by the guards. I keep going and then someone shouts ‘Kill’. And then more and more people join in and shout ‘Kill,’ and when everyone shouts it, they can’t attack everyone,” Greta said.
Greta later described being taken to a building to be searched and stripped, and claimed that the guards “had no empathy or humanity.”
“There are a lot of things I don’t remember. There are so many things happening at once. You’re in shock. It hurts, but you go into a state of trying to stay calm,” he said.
She described being forced into a cleaning closet, where Ben-Gvir insulted her while the exchange was filmed.
“So Ben-Gvir and his media team come in and stand there filming, and he says, ‘I will personally make sure that you are treated like a terrorist and that you rot in prison. You are Hamas. You are a terrorist. You want to kill Jewish babies,'” Greta described.
“As he screams, I sit as calmly as I can and quote UN conventions and say that Israel is not immune and must respect international law. I thought this was being recorded and would be released to the public, but I haven’t seen it released yet.”
Greta later said she refused to sign documents stating, among other things, that she had entered Israel illegally. Aftonbladet she reported, adding that she was then put into a freezing prison van, before being transported to Ktzi’ot Prison in the Negev Desert.
“It was a mockery, rough treatment and everything was filmed,” he said. “Everything they do is extremely violent. People’s medications were thrown in the trash in front of their eyes. Heart medications, cancer medications, insulin.”
He also described a large image covering a wall, showing a bombed-out Gaza and people fleeing, with text in Arabic reading “The New Gaza” next to a large Israeli flag. Aftonbladet reported.
“In prison, she is held in different cells. Sometimes in a cell of about 15 square meters with 13 other prisoners,” the report reads. “There are many days, four? Time is confused; there were no clocks. They barely receive food or drinking water throughout their captivity, but they are forced to drink from the sink tap, from which something brown flows. Several fell ill.”
Greta told the outlet that she “couldn’t afford to cry” due to dehydration and said she was locked in an isolated cell full of bugs.
“It was very hot, like 40 degrees. We begged all the time: Can we have water? Can we have water? In the end, we screamed. The guards walked in front of the bars the whole time, laughing and holding their water bottles. They threw the water bottles into the trash cans in front of us,” he said.
Aftonbladet reported that about 60 people were placed in a small outdoor cage, citing several flotilla participants, adding that most of them had no space to sit.
“When people fainted, we would bang on the cages and ask for a doctor to come. Then the guards came and said, ‘We’re going to gas you,'” Greta explained. “It was normal for them to say that. They raised a gas cylinder and threatened to press it against us.
“During the nights, the guards would come by regularly and shake the bars, shine flashlights and several times at night they would come in and force everyone to stand up,” he added.
The activist told the Swedish media that Stockholm did nothing to guarantee better conditions for Swedish prisoners and that there was no access to legal representation except five minutes with a lawyer in a port.
“We were together and we told them about the treatment we received. About the lack of food, water, about the abuse. The torture. We showed them the physical injuries we had: bruises and scratches,” he said.
“We gave them all our contact information: I gave them my father’s number and the number of our contact in the organization. We were clear: everything we say now must be disclosed to the media.”
Greta said Aftonbladet that three people from the Swedish embassy contacted her and her fellow Swedes, but only to tell them that they had consular access.
“We said over and over again: we need water. And they saw that the guards had bottles of water,” he said. Embassy staff said: “We will take note of it.” One of us, Vincent, said, ‘Next time we meet, you should bring water.'”
When embassy staff returned two days later, Greta said they brought no water, “except for a small bottle that was half empty.”
“Vincent, who was in worse shape, was able to drink it,” he said. Aftonbladet. “We kept asking the guards, ‘Can we have some water?’ “But they just walked around with their water bottles and didn’t respond.”
Aftonbladet reported: “Several participants reported that an activist became enraged and kicked the trash can where the guards had thrown their water bottles. The bottles spilled on the ground, and Greta and the others dropped to the ground and rushed to open the bottles and drink the water the guards left behind.”
Greta added that embassy staff saw this but left the prison anyway.
Originally published in Swedish.
