Published 11/05/2026 12:54 | Edited 05/12/2026 09:33
After ten days illegally imprisoned in Israel, Brazilian activist Thiago Ávila disembarked at Guarulhos International Airport at around 5:30 pm this Monday (11) and was received by Palestine solidarity organizations. Before leaving for Brasília, his hometown, he gave an interview to the press and made serious allegations in which he reported having been tortured, fainted twice under attack and threatened with death by Israeli interrogators.
The defender of the Palestinian cause had been kidnapped by Israeli armed forces on April 30, during a new mission by the Global Sumud Flotilla that attempted to bring humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip. Upon arriving at the airport, before the press conference, Ávila was detained by the Federal Police for questioning, which ended around 6:30 pm.
“They directly said they wanted to kill me, leave me in prison for a hundred years. But they just can’t pay the political cost of that, and with the Palestinians, due to the dehumanization campaign and the complicity of the world’s governments, they believe they can pay the political cost of torturing and murdering Palestinians, and that’s what we need to stop,” he said.
Torture and testimony in Israeli prison
At the press conference, Thiago was direct: “Every time I come back from a flotilla, there is a question about how they treated me, and this time I have a lot more to say, unfortunately. But the important thing is that, on my side, there were people being treated much worse than me.”
According to the activist, he was held in an Israeli internal intelligence torture and interrogation center, where Palestinians were subjected to daily aggression. The interrogators, he said, openly stated that they had judicial authorization to torture — and that the torture sessions of the detainees around him were treated as “music” by those carrying out them.
“In the Israeli internal intelligence torture and interrogation center, there were Palestinian people being tortured next to me every day, without exception. The interrogators said it was music. They treated those people without any respect, without any dignity. And with me it was a fraction of that, which is also absurd.” — Thiago Ávila, in a press conference at Guarulhos Airport.
Ávila confirmed that he fainted twice as a result of the attacks he suffered — episodes that, according to him, were more intense and violent than on the two previous occasions on which he had been detained by Israeli forces.
Asked if his return represents a victory against Zionism, the activist was emphatic: “My return was just a correction of a serious violation. I was kidnapped by Israel, I was not arrested. I was tortured by Israel, and not interrogated with ‘advanced methods’, as they said they were authorized to do. We have to denaturalize these things. There are nine thousand Palestinians there now.”
Palestinian gratitude to Brazil and Lula
Ávila also thanked President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva for his public support during his detention and conveyed the gratitude of the Palestinian people to Brazil. According to him, inside the Israeli prison, inmates who were able to communicate with him through the walls and doors always mentioned Brazil with affection — as did some of the more precarious guards, who were not, in his words, “flooded with hate in their hearts”.
“What I have as a reference is what the Palestinian people themselves say about Brazil and about President Lula. The Palestinian people are very grateful that President Lula was the greatest world leader to say the fastest, in the process of escalating the genocide, that it was a war perpetrated against women and children”, said Thiago.
Complete break with Israel
At the end of his speech, Ávila went beyond the personal case and made a direct political call to the Brazilian government. For him, rhetorical solidarity is not enough, it is necessary to break all institutional ties with the Israeli State.
“Brazil still has relations with the genocidal state of Israel; military relations, commercial, academic, cultural, artistic agreements. All of these must be broken, because the Brazilian people do not want to have any relationship with the state that starves children to death”, highlighted Ávila.
The activist concluded by remembering that the fight is not individual: “Like everything we do in our solidarity action with the Flotilla and with the Brazilian solidarity movement with Palestine, it is a long and arduous process, which is not defined by specific people. It is something much more important than any individual, and demands constant mobilization.”
Context: flotilla and blockade of Gaza
The Sumud Global Flotilla had departed from France, Spain and Italy carrying food and survival items for the population of Gaza, under Israeli blockade since 2007. Israeli forces intercepted the vessel in international waters on April 30. While Thiago and Spanish-Palestinian activist Saif Abukeshek were taken to Israel, the more than 100 other participants were taken to the Greek island of Crete and released. Saif was deported to Spain and, upon landing in Barcelona, declared that his biggest concern is the Palestinians still held in Israeli detention centers. Currently, 57 flotilla vessels remain in Türkiye, where participants discuss the next steps of the mission.
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with agencies
Source: vermelho.org.br