Rome, 21 May (LaPresse) – “I was beaten, Dario Carotenuto was beaten, and others were beaten far worse than us. I saw people with suspected broken arms and ribs. Almost everyone who passed through the entrance container was beaten, and we could hear the screams from outside. The boarding operations were also much more violent than in the past. This is the face of Israel, and unfortunately this is nothing compared to what Israel does to 9,000 Palestinian prisoners.” So said Alessandro Mantovani, a journalist with Il Fatto Quotidiano who was on board the Gaza Flotilla, in an audio recording published on the newspaper’s website. ‘If Israel can do all this, it is because it has the support of Western and European governments, including our own, which this time protested,’ added Mantovani, who recounted that he and Carotenuto were ‘handcuffed and had chains put on their ankles’ and “were taken to the police station at Ben Gurion Airport. There I was held in a cell all afternoon and then at half past eleven they put us on a plane to Athens.”
Flotilla, Mantovani: ‘Carotenuto and I were beaten, handcuffed and chained’
Rome, 21 May (LaPresse) – “I was beaten, Dario Carotenuto was beaten, and others were beaten far worse than us. I saw people with suspected broken arms and ribs. Almost everyone who passed through the entrance container was beaten, and we could hear the screams from outside. The boarding operations were also much more violent than in the past. This is the face of Israel, and unfortunately this is nothing compared to what Israel does to 9,000 Palestinian prisoners.” So said Alessandro Mantovani, a journalist with Il Fatto Quotidiano who was on board the Gaza Flotilla, in an audio recording published on the newspaper’s website. ‘If Israel can do all this, it is because it has the support of Western and European governments, including our own, which this time protested,’ added Mantovani, who recounted that he and Carotenuto were ‘handcuffed and had chains put on their ankles’ and “were taken to the police station at Ben Gurion Airport. There I was held in a cell all afternoon and then at half past eleven they put us on a plane to Athens.”
