ISTANBUL 

Eight international activists from the Gaza-bound aid ship Madleen remain in Israeli custody, a rights group said on Wednesday.

“The Madleen volunteers’ continued custodial detention is completely unlawful,” Israeli human rights organization and legal center Adalah said in a statement.

“The volunteers must be released immediately and safely returned, either to the Madleen to resume their humanitarian mission to Gaza or to their countries of origin.”

Israeli forces seized the British-flagged vessel in international waters early Monday and detained its 12-strong crew.

The ship had set sail from Sicily, Italy, on June 6, for Gaza in an attempt to break an Israeli naval blockade on the enclave, where nearly 55,000 people have been killed in a deadly onslaught since October 2023.

The Israeli authorities deported four activists on Tuesday, including Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, to their home countries, while eight others remain in detention.

Adalah said that the eight activists were accused of illegal entry into Israel.

“They neither sought to enter Israel nor intended to enter Israeli territorial waters,” it added. “Their planned route was from Sicily to international waters and then directly into the internationally recognized territorial waters of the State of Palestine, into Gaza.”

It identified the activists in Israeli custody as Suayb Ordu from Türkiye, Mark van Rennes from the Netherlands, Rima Hassan, Pascal Maurieras, Yanis Mhamdi, and Reva Viard from France, Thiago Avila from Brazil, and Yasemin Acar from Germany.

Adalah accused the Israeli Detention Review Tribunal of enabling the authorities “to extend detention arbitrarily, potentially for one month, until 8 July, 2025, without any further judicial oversight” by setting a follow-up custody review for the activists on July 8, “in clear violation of international law.”

As Israel has continued to close all Gaza’s border crossings to humanitarian aid since early March, aid agencies have warned about the risk of famine among Gaza’s 2.4 million inhabitants.

Last November, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.

Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its war on the enclave.