Activist arrested in West Bank, 'beaten and humiliated in prison'

"They searched us, interrogated us, scanned us and stripped us naked, without ever giving us the opportunity to speak to a lawyer." This is the story of Marco Cola, one of the two activists from Brescia stopped on Friday by the Israeli authorities in the West Bank together with his partner Paula Jesus and four other Italians, while they were picking olives in a Palestinian field about twenty kilometers from Ramallah.

The two returned to Italy this morning on a flight from Israel, which landed at Venice airport, and have already reached Brescia.

Cola speaks of a detention marked by sleep deprivation, threats and humiliation: "Every twenty minutes they came to wake you up, with the lights always on, noises, insults and derision. The first night we were left without water and they didn't give us anything to eat until seven the next morning. We also asked for toilet paper, but it wasn't there. Now I have blisters all over my body", he says.

The women of the Italian group, he specifies, were not beaten, while the Palestinian owners of the land were "beaten to death".