Wounded Indonesian Gaza Activists Taken to Ankara

BOGOR, KOMPAS.com - Two Indonesian volunteers wounded in the Isreali attack on the  Freedom Flotilla  bound for Gaza on Monday will be flown to Ankara, Turkey, on Thursday morning at 4 local time.        Indonesian Medical Emergency Rescue Committee (MER-C) chief Sarbini Abdul Murad said on Thursday he had received the information from the flotilla’s organizing committee, the Insani Yardim Vakfi (IHH).                      "However, we still do not know what will happen with them in Ankara , whether they are to be taken to a hospital or brought to Indonesian Embassy there," Sarbini said adding that the latest developments had changed the initial plan to send a representative from Indonesia to Israel to look after the two Indonesian volunteers detained there.       The two activists, namely Octavianto Emil Baharudin and Fachrizal, were part of the "Flotilla to Gaza" group mission carrying more than 10,000 tons of relief and developmental aid to Gaza, along with roughly 700 participants from more than 30 countries. The volunteers came from Indonesia, South Africa, Algeria, Turkey, Macedonia, Pakistan, Yemen, Kosovo, the UK and US and Kuwait - and also included an exiled former archbishop of Jerusalem who currently lives in the Vatican.

There were also an Italian cardinal, several Orthodox Jews, 1976 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mairead Corrigan Maguire of Northern Ireland, European legislators and an elderly Holocaust survivor. Also among them were Ann wright, a retired United States Army colonel, and a former US diplomat who resigned in 2003 to protest then President George Bush`s war on Iraq.