Turkish Lawyer Submits List of Israeli Flotilla Raiders
A lawyer for a Turkish Islamic group said Friday he had submitted to prosecutors a list of Israeli soldiers involved in a deadly raid on a flotilla sent by the group to break the Gaza blockade.
"We have presented a list of Israeli soldiers who gave the order for and who were involved in the attack on the Turkish flotilla to the Istanbul prosecutor's office," Ramazan Ariturk, the lawyer for the Humanitarian Relief Foundation (IHH) which organized the ill-fated flotilla, told Agence France Presse.
"Currently we are waiting for the prosecutor's office to issue an order for arrest," he said.
Eight Turks and one Turkish-American were killed when Israeli commandos boarded the flag ship of the six-boat flotilla on May 31 last year, to stop it from breaking Israel's blockade on Gaza.
A U.N. report accused Israel of acting with "excessive force" in the operation. But it endorsed the legality of Israel's naval blockade of Gaza, which the Jewish state says is necessary to prevent the Islamist movement Hamas, which rules the coastal enclave, from obtaining weapons.
The lawyer said the list was based on the testimonies of Israeli soldiers included in Israel's report on the incident submitted to the United Nations.
"Some Israeli soldiers who regretted what happened reached me and gave some of the soldier’s identities", added the lawyer, explaining that those soldiers were not involved in the clash but merely observers.
Ariturk declined to give the exact number of Israeli soldiers who were included in the list but said there were more than 10.
The killing of nine people on the Mavi Marmara, the lead ship of the convoy taking aid to Gaza, sparked widespread outrage and further deteriorated Turkey's ties with Israel.
Ankara last week expelled the Israeli ambassador and suspended all military agreements with Israel, in respond to this country's refusal to apologize for the killings.
Source: Agence France Presse
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