Arrest of the “flotilla for Gaza” by Israel: the French National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office opens an investigation for “torture” and “war crimes”

Activists who testified to having been victims of “torture” were heard. An investigation was opened on Friday June 5 by the French National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office (Pnat) for “torture” and “war crimes”, following a report from the government on the manner in which French people from the “Gaza flotilla” were treated by the Israeli authorities. The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Jean-Noël Barrot, had actually announced, Friday May 29, on France Inter, that he had seized “the public prosecutor, under article 40 of the Code of Criminal Procedure“, after having learned of “violence” targeting French militants from the flotilla, intercepted off the coast of Cyprus on May 18 by the Israeli navy.

Requested by the AFP, the Pnat specified to the AFP that it had entrusted the Central Office for the Fight against Crimes Against Humanity with this preliminary investigation opened to “torture, within the meaning of the New York Convention of December 10, 1984”, et “war crimes”.

During this arrest, the Israeli Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben Gvir, released a video showing the activists kneeling, handcuffed and holding their heads to the ground. France has since prohibited access to its territory to this minister, a figure of the Israeli extreme right.