Published on 6/26/2026
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Last update: 00:53 (Mecca time)
French nurse Malika Bouya, of Moroccan origin, returned to the French city of Nice in a wheelchair after she had joined, for a humanitarian reason, the mission of delivering aid to the Gaza Strip within the Global Resilience Fleet while on her feet.
The French nurse did not know that her journey within the Al-Samoud fleet, which includes 54 nationalities, would end with her in a wheelchair and with a judicial file before the French courts on charges of “war crimes and torture.”
Boya suffered two fractures in the cervical vertebrae at the back of her neck due to torture, and an injury to her hand made her unable to move it normally.
Malika recounts the first moments of the attack with horrific accuracy; While the fleet was making its way, Israeli naval boats loaded with heavily armed soldiers intercepted it, boarded the ship, and then took them to another military ship under tight Israeli military guard.
Malika said in a video recording she provided to Al Jazeera that she and everyone who was with her on the boat were clearly kidnapped. The Israeli occupation soldiers forced the activists to raise their hands at gunpoint, then they were taken to a huge military ship, while their boats were left at sea with their engines running, adrift without a captain, in a scene that embodies disregard for all international laws.
Inside a torture container
Once the detainees were transferred to the military ship, the chapters of “Two Days of Terror” began, she continues: “They twisted my arms, put us all on our knees with our heads down, then forced us to lie on our stomachs with our faces touching the ground.”
The matter did not stop at beatings, but rather extended to systematic torture. The French nurse saw her colleagues being electrocuted, and the Israeli soldiers tore off the detainees’ clothes and placed them in pools of cold water on the deck of the ship, amid humiliating mockery that included imitating the sounds of goats and hysterical laughter, in an attempt to rob them of their human dignity.
At that time, Boya suffered a severe injury in the arm due to the severity of the torture, and she continued that the most difficult stage was when they passed through the “torture container” – a term agreed upon by the detainees – which is a dark room inside the ship, in which they received torture one after another at the hands of masked soldiers.
There, Malika was repeatedly punched in the chest and back by three masked soldiers who beat her. She bitterly recounts: “I was screaming that I couldn’t breathe, but they continued without mercy.” When the door of the container opened and she was thrown into the detention yard, she found her companions drowned in their own blood, suffering from severe fractures and wounds.
She continues: “I could hear the sounds of torture in that container; the voices of men, women, children, and the elderly, and everyone was being beaten.”
Resilience bill
After her release and transfer to Turkey, Boya asked to go directly to the hospital due to severe pain in her arm, as initial examinations showed two fractures in the cervical vertebrae at the back of the neck, and later, in France, doctors discovered an additional fracture and another crack.
Boya stressed that the psychological effects are no less severe than the physical injuries, saying: “We are all shocked by what we were exposed to.” She added that the French participants filed complaints before the French judiciary, where an investigation was opened by authorities specialized in war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Despite continuing her treatment, Pouya stressed that what happened did not break her will, saying: “They wanted to destroy and humiliate us, but we became stronger.”
The “Spring 2026 Mission” of the Al-Samoud Fleet was launched with about 39 boats, which sailed from the Spanish city of Barcelona on April 12, where the organizers planned for the participation of more than 100 ships and boats, and the fleet set off from various ports in Spain, Italy and Tunisia.
