SAN FRANCISCO — When Israeli commandos seized a supply flotilla bound for Gaza, Paul Larudee decided he would not go gently.
Larudee, a 64-year-old former linguistics professor and Fulbright scholar, put on a life vest and jumped in the Mediterranean Sea, said Joe Meadors, one of five Americans in Larudee’s group known as the Free Palestine Movement.
On his swim toward Gaza, the Northern California man eluded an Israeli patrol craft for 30 minutes before he was cornered, Meadors said.
Larudee was taken to a prison, bruised and cut, where he refused medical treatment, said Akiva Tor, the Israeli consul general in San Francisco.
Tor said all the Americans in the flotilla except for Larudee would be back in the U.S. by Thursday.
Larudee’s wife Betty said her husband, a resident of El Cerrito and co-founder of the Free Palestine Movement, has traveled to Gaza several times to deliver humanitarian aid to Palestinians. On one trip in the late 1990s, he was shot in the leg.
She said she heard her husband "is bruised, has sore joints, a black eye and he was Tasered once or twice.”
She also said she was told by an attorney in Israel that her husband would board a plane Thursday for Greece, where he might stay for a few days to rest before returning to California.
Meadors, a 63-year-old Navy veteran from Corpus Christi, Texas, returned Tuesday to the U.S.
Bowing to international pressure, Israel decided not to prosecute any of the nearly 700 activists aboard six ships attempting to deliver supplies to Palestinians in Hamas-controlled Gaza.
Nine activists were killed and dozens injured in the incident.
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