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After four days in Israeli detention, Thiago Avila was relieved to be back in Brazil. He had been placed in police custody with 11 others, and had spent two days in isolation, after trying to bring humanitarian aid to Gaza by sea. Their ship, Madleen, was intercepted leading to what he described as an exhausting stay marked by inhuman treatment and a brief hunger strike.
And yet he said to CBC News from Sao Paulo, he chose to be detained rather than signing documents admitting what he considered a false accusation – which they had tried to illegally enter Israel.
About twenty hours after the interception of the ship, Avila, 37, said they were taken to the ground and piled up in small police vehicles. He said they had not had access to a bathroom and that a crew member has stopped in the police car.
“It was a very degrading [situation]”He said.
Israeli police did not respond to a request for comments on Avila’s prison time.
They were taken to an immigration establishment, he says, where the former officers of the Israeli defense forces demanded that he and the others – a climate activist was from Greta Thunberg among them – watch videos of October 7, 2023, attacking by Hamas against Israel, which sparked the Gaza war in Gaza and a human crisis.
He says they refused – unless the officer they were talking about, watch videos of what’s going on in Gaza.
“I said” if you don’t watch the video of the genocide you commit, we don’t want to watch the video you use to make the consent of your genocide “,” he said.
The manager refused and the crew was not made to see the videos.
He said that he was asked, once again, by an immigration agent, to sign documents that said he had illegally entered Israel. He would have been expelled and prohibited from the country for 100 years if he had signed. He refused again. Avila says that the boat was in international waters when it was intercepted.
But the group agreed that some of them should sign so that they can go out and tell the story of Madleen.
“We did not want to have no other voice telling the truth about what happened,” he said.
Four signed and were released.
The others were taken to the Givon prison of Israel and placed in separate cells. Avila says that the conditions were terrible – little or no access to the water, which was dark; The bedbugs which, according to him, have led to scabies; and psychological torment by sleep depravity.
“They would come every hour to make noise, make everyone get up [and] Not being able to sleep, “he said.
Avila says he was distinguished for isolation because he was one of the mission organizers and because he had made a hungry and thirsty strike.
He said that the police told him that he would be disciplined and offered him food on several occasions – bread, houmous and rice.
Avila says he said to them: “Since you deny … food for more than two million people in Gaza, how can I accept your food and your water?”
For months now, aid has almost cast In Gaza from the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas was broken in March. But the enclave has been blocked for years, inspiring missions like Madleen’s Bring Aid in Gaza. Since 2008, only five boats have been able to make the band and come back successfully.
Avila says that his lonely cell was infested with rats and cockroaches. He says the police have become more violent with him, pushing him and threatening to take him to Gaza and put him in the notorious of Sde Teiman prison.
And yet, on June 12, Avila was released and returned a flight to Brazil, to find his wife and daughter.
He says he is already registered for the next mission in Gaza.
Before leaving, he told an Israeli official that they would see again “very soon”.
“We continue to have new missions and will not stop as long as Palestine is not free.”
