Lebanese detainees captured in flotilla raid arrive home (Roundup)

Jun 2, 2010, 22:04 GMT

Beirut/Naqoura - Four Lebanese detainees, who were among the activists captured during the Israeli raid earlier this week on a flotilla carrying aid bound for the Gaza Strip, were released late Wednesday at the Israeli-Lebanese border.

Two journalists from the Doha-based television television network Al-Jazeera, Abbas Nasser and Andre abi Khalil, arrived in a first convoy at the Naqoura border crossing escorted by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). The two journalists appeared calm and in good condition.

Nasser, the Beirut correspondent of Al-Jazeera, told Lebanese media at the scene that he had been 'mistreated by the Israeli soldiers and was beaten.'

In a second convoy, an ambulance carried the head of the Lebanese delegation Hani Suleiman, who was wounded in the leg during the attack, and Hussein Shukur.

Shukur told the German Press Agency dpa at the Naqoura crossing between Israel and Lebanon, 'I told them (Israeli soldiers) you are murderers ... face-to-face, we are not against the Jewish people but against the Zionists.'

'The people who were on the freedom boat succeeded in showing the right image of Israel,' Nawaf al-Mussawi, a Hezbollah member of parliament, told dpa. 'We have to all work on breaking the Gaza siege.'

A fifth Lebanese, who also works for Al-Jazeera network and carries an Irish passport was deported from Tel Aviv to Ireland.

A crowd of Lebanese people headed by Hezbollah lawmakers greeted the four detainees at the Naqoura crossing, throwing rice and flowers.

Israel's navy on Monday stormed the flotilla, made up of six boats carrying some 700 pro-Palestinian activists and 10,000 tons of humanitarian aid bound for the Gaza Strip. At least nine people died as a result of the raid.