Dutch Gaza activists back in the Netherlands

Two Dutch nationals who were picked up by Israeli forces while travelling with a convoy of six ships taking aid to Gaza have arrived back in the Netherlands.


Anne de Jong (29) and Amin Abou Rashed (43) were on different boats when the Israeli army seized control. De Jong was hit in the legs by rubber bullets when the Israeli army boarded her boat. Rashed was unharmed.
‘We heard and saw shooting,’ De Jong told Nos tv from Istanbul, where their flight made an interim landing. ‘ You saw people falling.’
In an interview with Nos tv she said: ‘They came alongside in a boat shooting and from a helicopter shooting live bullets on to the deck.’

Jail

On the boat she was travelling on there was no resistance, she said. ‘We put our arms in front of us and said ‘ this is our boat and we are going with it to Gaza. We are not entering Israeli waters,’ she said.
The time spent in an Israeli cell was ‘very unpleasant’. ‘I could not contact the consulate, the questioning was without a lawyer and they kept you awake,’ she told Radio 1 news.

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