Swedish activist Greta Thunberg revealed that she was beaten, humiliated and threatened with being “gassed in a cage” during her time in Israeli custody, Swedish news outlet Aftonbladet reported in an interview published on Wednesday.
Greta was one of 450 people aboard the Global Sumud Flotilla, a humanitarian aid mission involving over 40 vessels which aimed to deliver food, water and medicine to the Gaza Strip amid Israel’s two-year onslaught on the besieged enclave.
The boats were intercepted by the Israeli navy on October 1, with Greta and all other activists being arrested and kept in Israeli custody. She was released and deported to Greece on October 6.
In her interview, Greta recounted her treatment in Israeli custody, which ranged from 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 she said on the evening she returned home, at a press conference in Sergels Torg together with several of the other Swedes who participated in the large Global Sumud Flotilla that attempted to bring emergency aid to Gaza.”
Quoting Greta, the report read, “This is not about me or the others from the flotilla. There are thousands of Palestinians, hundreds of whom are children, who are being held without trial right now, and many of them are most likely being tortured.”
“This shows that if Israel, with the whole world watching, can treat a well-known, white person with a Swedish passport this way, just imagine what they do to Palestinians behind closed doors.”
Greta noted that what the flotilla activists went through is “only a small, small part of what Palestinians have experienced” and described bullet holes with bloodstains and messages carved into the cell walls by Palestinian prisoners detained there previously.
The activist recounted the night the flotilla was boarded, mentioning chemical agents employed by Israel and saying “that she will never again be able to look at a starry sky without thinking about drones”.
“It was extremely hot down there. We just sat there. Those who weren’t guarding us walked around the boat, tearing things apart and throwing everything around,” she described.
“After about 20 hours, they arrived in Ashdod, Israel’s largest industrial port, 40 kilometres south of Tel Aviv. A soldier pointed at Greta Thunberg and said, ‘You first, come on!’” the publication wrote.
Greta added that she was not allowed to wear her t-shirt with “Free Palestine” on it and was ordered to change. She put on an orange one with the text “Decolonize” instead.
“And then I put on my frog hat. When I’m about to get off the boat, there are a bunch of police officers waiting for me,” Greta recalled. “They grab me, pull me to the ground, and throw an Israeli flag over me.”
Aftonbladet reported that Greta was dragged to a paved area fenced in with iron fences in a “protracted scene that lasts for over six hours”, according to Greta and several participants in the flotilla.
“It was kind of dystopian,” Greta said. “I saw maybe 50 people sitting in a row on their knees with handcuffs and their foreheads against the ground.
“They dragged me to the opposite side from where the others were sitting, and I had the flag around me the whole time. They hit and kicked me. Then they ripped off my frog hat, threw it on the ground, stomped and kicked it, and kind of threw a tantrum,” she added.
“They moved me very brutally to a corner that I was turned towards. ‘A special place for a special lady’, they said,” Greta explained. “And then they had learned lilla hora (little whore) and ‘Hora Greta’ (whore Greta) in Swedish, which they repeated all the time.”
Greta added that while the Israeli flag was draped around her, guards would attack her if she touched the flag, even if it flapped towards her. She then described being bound “very tightly” with zip ties.
“They took my bag and threw away everything they interpreted as being related to Palestine,” she added. “They took every item and stared into my eyes while slowly cutting them up with a knife, while ten people took selfies.”
The activist also described the moment far-right Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir came to the facility and verbally abused the detainees.
“He shouted, ’You are terrorists. You want to kill Jewish babies.’ Those who shouted back 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 lifted my head from the ground, I was kicked by the guard standing next to me.”
She then described a “moving scene” to Aftonbladet: “I needed to go to the bathroom and asked to do so. Then I had to be led through where people were sitting and they saw me. A female member of the Swedish delegation said, ‘We are with you, Greta.’
“Then she was taken aside and assaulted. When I continue through the rows of people sitting there, they say ‘Slay!’” she added, referring to a slang term meaning to do something well.
“They say ‘Slay’ because they know it’s my word. And those who say slay get beaten by the guards. I continue forward and then someone shouts ‘Slaaaay’. And then more and more people join in and shout ‘Slay’, and when everyone is shouting it, they can’t assault everyone,” Greta said.
Greta then described being taken into a building to be searched and undressed, stating that the guards had “no empathy or humanity”.
“There’s a lot I don’t remember. So much is happening at once. You’re in shock. You’re in pain, but you go into a state of trying to stay calm,” she said.
She described being forced into a cleaning closet, where Ben-Gvir hurled abuse at her while the exchange was filmed.
“Then 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.
“While he is shouting, 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 spread to the public, but I still haven’t seen it spread.”
Greta then said she refused to sign papers stating, among other things, that she had entered Israel illegally, Aftonbladet reported, adding that she was then put in a freezing cold prison van, before being transported to Ktzi’ot Prison in the Negev Desert.
“It was mockery, rough handling, and everything was filmed,” she said. “Everything they do is extremely violent. People’s medications were thrown into the trash can in front of their eyes. Heart medication, cancer medication, insulin.”
She also described a large picture covering one 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 a cell of around 15 square meters with 13 other prisoners,” the report read. “There are many days—four? Time blurs together; there were no clocks. They receive hardly any food and no clean water during their entire captivity, but are forced to drink from the tap in the toilet sink, where something brown flows. Several became ill.”
Greta told the outlet that she “couldn’t afford to cry” because of dehydration and said that she was locked in an isolated cell filled with insects.
“It was so hot, like 40 degrees. We begged the whole 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 up their water bottles. They threw the bottles with water in them into the trash cans in front of us,” she recounted.
Aftonbladet reported that around 60 people were put in a small cage outdoors, citing several participants of the flotilla, adding that most of them did not have room to sit down.
“When people fainted, we banged on the cages and asked for a doctor. Then the guards came and said, ‘We’re going to gas you’,” Greta outlined. “It was standard for them to say that. They held up a gas cylinder and threatened to press it against us.
“During the nights, guards regularly came by and shook the bars, shining flashlights, and several times a night they came in and forced everyone to stand up,” she added.
The activist told the Swedish outlet that Stockholm did not do anything to ensure better conditions for Swedish prisoners and that there was no access to legal representation except for five minutes with a lawyer at a port.
“We were together and 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,” she said.
“We gave them all our contact details — I gave them my father’s number and the number of our contact in the organisation. We were clear: everything we say now must be released to the media.”
Greta told Aftonbladet that three people from the Swedish embassy made contact with 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 water bottles,” she recounted. The embassy staff said: ’We’ll make a note of that.’ One of us, Vincent, said: ’Next time we meet you, you must bring water.’“
When the embassy staff returned two days later, Greta said they did not bring any water, “except for a small bottle of their own that was half empty”.
“Vincent, who was in the worst shape, got to drink it,” she told Aftonbladet. “We kept asking the guards, ‘Can we have some water?’ but they just walked around with their water bottles and didn’t answer.”
Aftonbladet reported: “Several participants reported that a female activist became enraged and kicked the trash can where the guards had thrown their water bottles. Bottles spilled onto the floor, and Greta and the others threw themselves on the floor and hurried to open the bottles and drink the water left behind by the guards.”
Greta added that the embassy staff saw this but left the prison anyway.
Originally published in Swedish.
