Shahidul Alam, director of Drik and a photographer, has described his experience while held by Israeli forces, saying they subjected detainees primarily to psychological abuse and tried to create an atmosphere of terror. At a news conference this afternoon at Drik, he recounted that he returned to Bangladesh early this morning after being freed from Israeli detention.

Alam said that after being taken from the ship and brought ashore they suffered various forms of mistreatment, with mental torment the most severe. He described being bound with his hands behind his back and forced to sit in a place where the Israeli forces had already urinated. At one point his Bangladeshi passport was thrown away by the soldiers; whenever he reached to pick it up he was assaulted. He also said two fellow detainees were struck with the barrel of a machine gun for speaking among themselves, and on another occasion one detainee was threatened with being shot after being accused of being a Hamas supporter.

He told reporters they were held in one of Israel’s most secretive desert prisons. One detainee captured from another ship told him the Israelis had accused that man of being a Hamas agent and said he would be shot inside. Alam said the prisoners staged a hunger strike and mostly refused food; a few, weakened physically, accepted some food. Over two-and-a-half days they were given only a single plate of food. The places they were made to sleep were iron platforms and the toilet conditions were appalling. He added that in the middle of the night Israeli forces would sometimes storm the cell carrying machine guns, shouting, ordering them to stand, and deliberately making loud noises to instill fear.

When a journalist asked about next steps, Alam said that because of the extraordinary solidarity shown among those detained, they have decided to build an international activist network. Since global leaders will not act, he said activists must — and they have already drawn up a blueprint. He declared they intend to return and mount further action, even saying “a thousand ships will sail” in the campaign. The Drik director compared the effort to the popular street movement that helped remove an autocrat in July in their own country and urged that a similar international mobilization is needed now.