The Freedom Flotilla Coalition called for an independent international investigation into what it described as serious sexual crimes committed by Israeli police and prison officials against flotilla volunteers, demanding accountability for those responsible.
The coalition, an international network of civil society solidarity groups founded in 2010, organizes peaceful maritime missions aimed at challenging Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip by carrying symbolic aid with activists, journalists, and volunteers from several countries. All such missions have been raided and their participants detained by the Israeli military.
In a statement on Friday, the coalition said that documented information showed some volunteers were subjected to sexual violations, including rape, after Israel’s military attacked flotilla vessels, seized them, and detained hundreds of civilians from international waters.
First public disclosure
The coalition said the first public disclosure came on Dec. 21, 2025, when German journalist Anna Liedtke, who was aboard the flotilla ship Conscience, spoke at an international conference in solidarity with political prisoners and said she was raped after resisting a forced strip search carried out by Israeli female officers while she was detained.
The Conscience was one of the vessels that sailed toward Gaza in early October, carrying dozens of journalists and international doctors, before it was seized and those on board were detained.
The coalition said it had supported Liedtke and respected her decision on when to make details public.
“I am coming forward not for myself, but for all the women who have endured sexual violence and sexual torture in Israeli prisons—for those who did not survive these attacks, for those who are experiencing this abuse now, and for those who cannot speak about it,” Liedtke said, according to the statement.
Liedtke was not the only volunteer to report sexual violence. Italian journalist Vincenzo Fullone, who was also aboard the Conscience, and Australian activist Surya McEwen reported similar assaults while in detention.
The statement included graphic testimonies from all three.
“After I was kidnapped by Israeli forces, I was subjected to repeated physical and sexual abuse. During a forced strip search, I was raped by Israeli female guards,” Liedtke said.
Fullone share his testimony saying that in three separate occasions, he was ordered “to enter a small, specially arranged room where I was completely stripped and subjected to invasive and painful anal searches,” .
McEwen said, “I was stripped naked and sexually assaulted by Israeli officers while being held hostage. One held a gun to my head, angrily threatening that he would kill me, while the other yanked and pulled on my genitals, perversely and almost gleefully.”
Wider pattern in Israeli detention
The coalition linked the reported assaults against flotilla volunteers to what it called an entrenched pattern of sexual violence and torture within Israel’s detention system, saying Palestinian, Israeli, and international human rights organizations have documented rape, forced stripping, and other forms of sexual violence against Palestinian detainees over years.
It cited what it described as recent investigations by the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights into systematic rape and sexual torture in detention amid the war in Gaza, saying these acts have intensified and form part of a decades-long pattern that it said amounts to war crimes and grave breaches of international humanitarian law.
The statement continued, “In one testimony, a 42-year-old mother, abducted at a checkpoint set up by Israeli soldiers in Gaza, reports being blindfolded, cuffed to a metal frame, stripped naked, filmed, beaten, and repeatedly raped over a period of three days. In another testimony, a 35-year-old father abducted from Al-Shifa Hospital reports that Israeli soldiers forcibly stripped him naked and then deployed a military dog to climb on him, urinate on him, and rape him.”
The coalition also pointed to accounts issued by UN-affiliated bodies about widespread sexual and gender-based violence by Israeli forces and security services, including forced public stripping and threats of rape.
It criticized the “selective silence” by international media outlets toward such testimonies, arguing that ignoring them entrenches impunity and distorts public understanding of the scale of abuses.
The coalition called on the UN and member states to demand unfettered access to Israeli detention facilities and to launch an independent international inquiry into allegations of sexual violence. It also urged the International Criminal Court to open an urgent investigation into all allegations of torture and sexual assault.
It said it would pursue all available international legal avenues to hold perpetrators accountable, stressing the alleged crimes “cannot be separated” from what it described as the context of occupation, blockade and structural impunity.
Despite repeated Israeli attacks on flotilla missions and seizures of vessels, a new attempt to challenge the blockade is being prepared. The Global Sumud Flotilla announced on Dec. 22 it was preparing a maritime mission in spring 2026 to break the siege on Gaza “in response to a direct call from Palestinians in Gaza,” adding the effort would focus not only on aid but on sustained civilian, specialized presence working alongside Palestinians.
