French doctor on board Madleen exposes the lie about the ‘deportation commitment sheet’
According to the Palestinian Information Center, Baptiste Andre, a French doctor and human rights activist who is a member of the crew of the “Madeleine” ship affiliated with the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, narrated the details of the violent and brutal detention of himself and his companions after the ship was seized by the Israeli army.
After returning to Paris, Andre said in an interview with the newspaper “Al-Arabi Al-Jadeed”: The Madeleine ship was attacked by the occupying army in international waters on its way to Gaza to break the siege. The Zionist forces seized the ship and its passengers in violation of international law and forcibly transferred them to the occupied territories, where they were held in very difficult conditions.
Andre continued: On Monday morning, a Zionist commando unit consisting of about 80 soldiers, supported by warships, surrounded the Madeleine ship at a distance of more than 100 nautical miles from the coast of occupied Palestine.
He added: “We had not crossed any border and the ship was seized while we were moving completely within the legal framework. The Israeli forces took control of the ship by force and locked the crew in the lower cabin for 18 hours, while they were given only a small amount of water and food until they reached the port of Ashdod.
According to Andre, the soldiers closed the cabin doors and placed the activists under constant surveillance, then transferred them to a detention center near Ben Gurion Airport. Andre also said that the crew was subjected to a thorough search with police dogs and then transferred in closed buses.
He recalled: The behavior of the Israeli forces was harsh, and they were deprived of sleep and food for long hours. The crew was also not given any information about the place or time of their arrest. The Palestinian lawyers who were responsible for defending them were also mistreated by the Israeli forces.
He revealed that the Israeli authorities presented them with a document called a “deportation undertaking sheet, in which it was falsely admitted that these people had entered occupied Palestine illegally. Andre strongly denied this claim and said: We did not enter occupied territories; rather, we were kidnapped in open waters and forcibly taken to occupied territories.
He, who refused to sign this undertaking, added: 8 of his companions also refused to sign the said undertaking and are still being held in a detention center near Ben Gurion Airport. These people are from France, Germany, Turkey, and Brazil. He called on the French government to intervene to release his colleagues and provide the necessary legal protection. Andre also added: I ask President Emmanuel Macron to take immediate action to release my colleagues.
In another part of the conversation, Andre mentioned the rescue of 4 African migrants in the middle of the sea who had been fleeing from the Libyan coast guard for 5 days and were dying. He said: “We saved them from death at the last moment. They were in a critical condition in terms of body temperature and then we handed them over to the Greek authorities.”
It is worth noting that the office of Rima Hassan, a French member of the European Parliament who was one of the passengers on the “Madeleine” ship, announced in a statement: “The seizure of this ship in international waters and the detention of its crew, including a member with parliamentary immunity, is a clear violation of international law and an unprecedented and dangerous act for European democratic institutions.”
The statement also denied the official Israeli narrative of “appropriate and humane” treatment of the detainees, writing: “The activists were deprived of food and water for hours and were kept on deck in unbearable conditions.”
The aforementioned statement called for immediate action by the European Union and its member states to release the detainees and impose decisive sanctions against the Zionist regime to end the illegal siege of Gaza and prevent continued human rights violations against civilians and international activists.