Israel attacked and killed 10 Turks...the story of the “Mavi Marmara” ship

Commemorating the 12th anniversary of the killing of 10 Turks on board the Turkish ship “Mavi Marmara” in 2010 (Reuters)

Thousands of Turkish citizens participated in a massive public march in Istanbul yesterday evening, Tuesday, May 31, 2022, to commemorate the 12th anniversary of the killing of 10 Turks on board the Turkish ship “Mavi Marmara” in 2010.

"Mavi Marmara" was one of the ships of the Freedom Flotilla, which included a group of ships carrying about 750 human rights and political activists on board, in addition to a number of international media representatives, relief materials, and humanitarian aid.

"Freedom Flotilla 1"

- May 29, 2010: Freedom Flotilla ships set off for the Gaza Strip with the aim of lifting the siege on it.

The launch of the ships to break the siege came after 6 international non-governmental organizations, the most important of which was the Turkish Humanitarian Relief Foundation (IHH), decided to take an initiative to break the siege imposed on the Gaza Strip by sending a naval fleet to it.

The Freedom Flotilla was prepared from several ships, including the Turkish "Mavi Marmara", which was carrying more than 500 activists and solidarity activists, most of whom were Turkish, and 3 other ships belonging to the European campaign to lift the siege on Gaza.

Among the figures who participated in the First Freedom Flotilla were the head of the Islamic Movement inside Palestine, Raed Salah, a representative in the Israeli Knesset, Haneen Al-Zoubi, parliamentarians from Ireland, Germany, Yemen, and Egypt, artists and writers from Sweden, and media figures from multiple countries.

The fleet departed from the ports of southern European countries and Turkey, and it was agreed to meet at a specific point on the coast of the city of Limassol, south of Cyprus, for the fleet to sail in the direction of Gaza.

However, while in international waters on May 31, 2010, the Mavi Marmara ship, one of the most important ships of the fleet, was attacked by special forces (commandos) belonging to the Israeli Navy, who used live bullets and tear gas. This prevented the fleet from reaching the Gaza Strip.

Attack at dawn

The ship’s captain, Captain Mahmoud Toral, narrated in press interviews that the Israelis began communications with the ship’s crew at 10:30 p.m. on May 30, 2010, in international waters. The crew told them that they were heading to Gaza, that they were in international waters, and that no party had the right to stop them. Their journey, and then communications were cut off between the two sides at around two o’clock in the morning on May 31 of the same month.

Toral denied Israel's claims of contacting them after that, until the attack began, which began at 4:30 in the morning with intense firing of live bullets, resulting in deaths and injuries, the number of whom was unknown at first.

Toral also denied Tel Aviv's claims that its forces were forced to defend themselves after being attacked by the ship's passengers, explaining that those in solidarity with Gaza were civilians and did not carry any weapons, but were forced to defend themselves with wooden brooms and the like in the face of heavily armed soldiers.

To falsify what happened, the soldiers made sure to break into the ship’s kitchens and brought knives from inside to try to convince others that they had been attacked with bladed weapons, so they were forced to respond with live bullets.

According to Toral, the ship was medically equipped to enable it to perform surgical operations when necessary. One of the doctors tried to treat a bleeding wounded man, but the soldiers beat him and threatened to kill him.

The passengers were handcuffed and imprisoned inside the ship under difficult health and psychological conditions after they became aware of the scale of the disaster and the number of dead and wounded. They were taken to the port of Ashdod, where some of them were assaulted and beaten. Then they were arrested and interrogated for long, exhausting hours, then they were released.

The captain of the ship, Bulent Yildirim, for his part, confirmed that those in solidarity with Gaza suffered difficult conditions during the detention period, and were forced to eat food and water that they suspected, forcing them to undergo medical tests immediately after their return to Turkey.

According to a report by the Forensic Medicine Institute in Istanbul, the Israeli attack on the Mavi Marmara ship caused the death of 10 people, the youngest of whom was 19 years old.

Ayatollah Tekin, one of those injured in the Israeli attack, said in a press interview that the ship turned into pools of blood when the attack began, stressing that the passengers’ defense of themselves using primitive means was met with extreme violence and live bullets from soldiers and helicopters.

- May 31, 2011: The dismissed government in Gaza, headed by Ismail Haniyeh, took the initiative to honor those killed on the ship by opening a memorial on the first anniversary of the attack. The Palestinian Prime Minister at the time, Ismail Haniyeh, confirmed in his speech during the ceremony that “the crime of the Freedom Flotilla 1 revealed the true face of the Zionist occupation.” ".

Investigations

- January 2015: The British newspaper The Independent published a report about British activists filing a lawsuit against the soldiers who attacked the Mavi Marmara, confirming that they may be prosecuted in Britain if they enter it in the future.

The British police received evidence to accuse 5 Israeli soldiers of committing a war crime in the attack on the ship, and the same newspaper reported that a report by the United Nations Human Rights Council indicated that one of the victims of the Israeli attack on the Marmara ship, who was 19 years old, was killed by several bullets, one of which was fired at him while he was thrown on the floor.

Several countries and international human rights and humanitarian organizations denounced the attack, which sparked a major crisis between Turkey and Israel. Tel Aviv entered into negotiations with Ankara to close the file by paying compensation to the families of the dead and compensation for the losses incurred by the ship, but without these negotiations achieving significant results.

Ankara demanded an international investigation into the incident, while the Comoros filed a complaint against Israel because the Turkish ship was registered with it.

The lawyer for the families of the victims of the Turkish ship “Mavi Marmara” said that two Jewish businessmen offered the victims a billion dollars in exchange for waiving the international lawsuits filed against 4 generals in the Israeli occupation army, but they refused.

- November 2014: The International Criminal Court announced that it would not prosecute Israel for its attack on the Mavi Marmara ship.

- December 9, 2016: A court in Istanbul dropped the case against 4 Israeli officers who were being tried in absentia in the case, days after the public prosecutor asked the Istanbul court to drop the case as a result of the bilateral agreement in which Israel agreed to pay compensation to the families of the victims.

- 2017: The Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Fatou Bensouda, confirmed her decision after the Criminal Court ordered her to reconsider the case.

The appeals judges criticized Bensouda in the strongest terms, noting that she “wrongly assumed” that she could disagree with the legal expressions made by judges before the trial.

The judges added, “The unfortunate tone used by the prosecutor to express her objection shows that her information was completely wrong about what was required of her,” but they stressed that she had the “final decision” on whether to press charges or not.

A Spanish court opened an investigation into the incident based on a lawsuit filed by the European Campaign to End the Siege on Gaza. However, the court quickly closed the investigation on June 11, 2015, and said it had closed the case in which Netanyahu and a number of his ministers were accused of committing crimes against humanity.

The court left the door open to the possibility of reopening the case file again in the event that Israeli officials set foot on Spanish soil, but it did not clarify the steps that would be taken if they did so.

- September 2, 2019: For the second time, the International Criminal Court in The Hague ordered its Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda to reconsider whether Israel should be prosecuted in the case of its attack on the Mavi Marmara ship, and to make a decision by December 2019 on the issue. Reconsider the case.

“The plaintiff must reconsider her decision by December 2, 2019,” Appeals Court President Solome Palungi Busa told the court, adding that the majority of judges supported this decision, and two opposed it.

Source: Al Jazeera