UN Inquiry: 'Israel Flotilla Raid Was Unlawful'

No one was safe: UN Inquiry into Israel's Flotilla Raid

‘No one was safe,’ once Israeli soldiers began using live ammunition on board the Mavi Marmara on 31 May 2010, says an authoritative UN investigation team the UN Fact Finding Mission (UNFFM) that included two senior international criminal lawyers, which published its report on 22 September into Israeli attacks on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla.

Their report is now going to be considered by the 57-member UN Human Rights Council next week that has the chance to finally ensure that Israel is held accountable for committing what the UNFFM found to be serious violations of human rights and humanitarian law including war crimes of wilful killing and torture.

The UNFFM found that Israeli military personnel used ‘incredible violence’ against civilians who the investigators describe as ‘persons genuinely committed to the spirit of humanitarianism’.

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Key findings from the UN inquiry

1. The conduct of the Israeli military and other personnel towards the flotilla passengers was not only totally disproportionate to the occasion but demonstrated levels of totally unnecessary and incredible violence. It constituted “grave violations of human rights law and international humanitarian law”

2. ‘Systematic humiliation and violent treatment of passengers’, and the ‘shocking’ and ‘gratuitous’ use of violence.

3. No evidence that the passengers fired or had firearms (para 165)

4. No effort was made to minimise injuries at certain stages of the operation and that the use of live fire was done in an extensive and arbitrary manner. “It is difficult not to conclude that, once the order to use live fire had been given, no one was safe,” the report states. “It seems a matter of pure chance that there were not more fatalities as a result.” (para 169)

5. There was a “prevailing climate of fear of violence that had a dehumanizing effect on all those detained on board.” (para 178)

Read all the key findings »

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