Rome prosecutors are investigating 14 Israeli officials, among them Defence Minister Israel Katz, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and military chief Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir, on suspicion of torture, kidnapping, personal injury, robbery and damage against Italian citizens detained when Israeli forces intercepted two Gaza-bound flotillas.
Prosecutors Francesco Lo Voi, Stefano Opilio and Lucia Lotti named the suspects in a statement on 16 October after a year of work by the Carabinieri ROS anti-terrorism unit on complaints from 50 Italians who sailed with the Global Sumud Flotilla in September to October 2025 and April to May 2026. The suspects span both military and police chains of command, from the cabinet to the commander of the prison where detainees were held.
Investigators reconstructed what the statement calls abuses "systematically" suffered by participants at every stage of custody, from boarding in international waters to release. The statement lists beatings, injuries, death threats, the repeated denial of essential food, the "deliberate" absence of medical care in evident emergencies, sleep deprivation and the total absence of adequate legal assistance.
Article 10 of the Italian penal code, which allows Italy to prosecute foreigners for serious crimes against Italian citizens abroad, requires the suspect to be on Italian territory. Prosecutors sent Israel a request for judicial assistance in June to obtain the records needed to establish individual responsibility.
From interception to deportation
Israeli naval forces boarded the first mission's boats on the night of 1 to 2 October 2025 outside territorial waters, in what prosecutors concluded was a breach of international maritime law. Investigators based that finding on technical analysis and witness testimony, according to the statement. Israeli forces destroyed the boats' livestreaming equipment and seized participants' electronic devices.
Participants were then massed together and shipped to Ashdod port, the statement said. The Israeli government said it had detained about 470 people from the mission, among them dozens of Italians, and held them at Ktzi'ot and Saharonim prisons in the Negev before deporting them over the following days.
Investigators documented beatings, injuries, death threats, insults and accusations of terrorism against numerous participants, the statement said. Prosecutors found that detainees were repeatedly refused essential food, held in precarious hygienic conditions and deprived of sleep at Ktzi'ot. Participants could not contact lawyers or Italian diplomats in time, and identification and court procedures took place without adequate legal assistance, according to the statement.
Yassine Lafram, president of the Union of Islamic Communities in Italy, described "punches on the back, blows to the head, blindfolded eyes and tied hands" after his return in October 2025, Domani reported. Benedetta Scuderi, a member of the European Parliament who was on board, told the parliament in Strasbourg: "We were kidnapped, searched, we could not sleep and some people were physically assaulted."
The 2026 missions
Israeli forces intercepted 22 boats of the second mission near Crete on 29 to 30 April 2026. Antonio La Piccirella, an Italian on the sailboat Holy Blue, said in a complaint filed in Rome that soldiers cut the boat's mainsail and engine cables, transferred the crew to a frigate and forced them to kneel with their hands behind their heads "pointing their weapons at us" to keep them silent. The complaint says soldiers struck participants staging a passive protest with kicks, punches and rifle blows, and that other detainees arrived with facial injuries and a broken nose. Most participants, including 24 Italians, were released in Crete.
Israeli forces detained 430 people from about 50 vessels in international waters on 18 May, at least 27 of them Italian, and took them to Ashdod and Ktzi'ot. On 20 May Ben-Gvir posted video of himself waving an Israeli flag over blindfolded detainees kneeling with their hands behind their backs. "Welcome to Israel, we are the masters," he said in the footage. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Ben-Gvir's conduct was "not in line with Israel's values and norms," and Foreign Minister Gideon Saar wrote that he had "knowingly caused harm to our State in this disgraceful display."
Complainants from the second mission described the same treatment as in 2025, carried out with harsher methods, including beatings in the dark, taser use and rubber bullets fired at participants, prosecutors said.
About 50 activists were taken to hospital in Istanbul after Israel deported them on 21 May, ANSA reported. Ruggero Zeni, 69, from Trentino, was kept under observation after what his brother said was an unprovoked punch to the liver from an Israeli guard. Organisers said 67 people were taken to hospital and recorded at least 36 fractures, a perforated lung and head injuries, figures that have not been independently verified. Reuters reported that five French participants were treated in Turkey for injuries including broken ribs and fractured vertebrae.
Organisers said at least 15 participants reported sexual assault, including rape, Reuters reported on 22 May. Rome prosecutors were assessing possible sexual violence at the time, ANSA reported, but the 16 October statement does not list sexual offences. Five of 26 French complainants allege sexual touching, according to their lawyers.
Israel's response
The Israel Prison Service called the May allegations "false and entirely without factual basis" and said detainees were held lawfully and received medical care in line with professional judgement and Health Ministry guidelines. The Israeli embassy in Australia said such claims were "entirely baseless" and intended "to advance the provocateurs' smear campaign against Israel."
Katz and Zamir did not respond to Reuters requests for comment on the Italian investigation. Ben-Gvir said in June, when the first reports of his own investigation emerged: "I will not shy away from one investigation or another and will continue to stand proudly alongside our fighters." The Israeli government says its naval blockade of Gaza is lawful.
Prosecutors said the case is at the preliminary investigation stage and that the suspects must be presumed innocent until a final verdict.
The chain of command
Katz and Ben-Gvir head the list for both missions. Katz, as defence minister, oversees the military that carried out the boardings, and Ben-Gvir, as national security minister, is responsible for the police and the Israel Prison Service that ran custody on land.
Zamir and Vice Admiral David Saar Salama, navy commander from 2 September 2021 to 24 December 2025, are named for the sea operations of the first mission. The statement also names Tal Politis as chief of staff in the naval chain of command, Colonel Eldad Borochovich, commander of the Shayetet 13 naval commando unit, and Colonel Eitan Paz, head of the Ashdod naval base where detainees were landed.
Police commissioner Daniel Levy and prison service commissioner Kobi Yaakobi are named for the land operations. The statement also names Brigadier General Menachen Bibas, head of the prison guards at Ktzi'ot, Assaf Zagori, commander of the prison service's Nahshon escort unit, and Berik Yitzchak, commander of the Border Police.
Vice Admiral Eyal Harel, who took command of the navy on 16 April 2026, and Major General Guy Levy, listed as chief of staff, replace Saar Salama and Politis in an otherwise substantially identical chain for the second mission, prosecutors said. Names are spelt as transliterated in the Italian statement, and some Italian outlets counted 13 suspects.
The statement maps each official to a stage of the operation but does not attribute specific acts to named individuals. Prosecutors charged ordinary Italian offences, so any case against a commander would rest on Italian rules of participation in a crime or on Article 40 of the penal code, under which failing to prevent harm one has a legal duty to prevent is equivalent to causing it. Proving either requires orders, rules of engagement, custody logs and communications that sit in Israeli records, which is what the June request seeks.
What stands between the file and a trial
Article 10 lets Italy prosecute a foreigner for a crime against an Italian citizen abroad on the victim's complaint, without a request from the justice minister, the Court of Cassation held in 2017, but only if the suspect is in Italy. In 2003 the court annulled custody orders against foreign suspects who were not in the country, holding that the presence condition applies to arrest measures during preliminary investigations as well as to trial. Article 8, the alternative, covers political crimes committed abroad, including common crimes driven wholly or partly by political motives, and requires a request from the justice minister, which would put the decision to prosecute with Carlo Nordio.
Italy's Constitutional Court ruled in October 2023, in the case of four Egyptian security officers accused over the 2016 torture and killing of the researcher Giulio Regeni, that defendants accused of torture can be tried in their absence when their state's refusal to cooperate prevents them being formally notified. The court said an indefinite paralysis of such trials would amount to "a de facto immunity." Its ruling concerned notification and left the territorial condition in Article 10 in place.
Nordio received the prosecutors' request for judicial assistance in May. He could refuse it, sign it or stay silent for 30 days, after which prosecutors could send it themselves, Open reported. The October statement says the request went to Israel in June. Lawyers for the Italian complainants urged national authorities to help secure a response.
The International Court of Justice ruled in 2002 that serving foreign ministers enjoy full immunity from foreign criminal jurisdiction. Whether that protection extends to sitting ministers in other posts, such as Katz and Ben-Gvir, is unsettled; a London court refused an arrest warrant for then defence minister Shaul Mofaz in 2004. Lower-ranking officials can claim only immunity for official acts. The UN International Law Commission adopted draft articles in May 2026 stating that this functional immunity does not apply to torture and other international crimes, and Italy's Court of Cassation recognised an emerging rule to that effect in 2008, in the case of a US soldier accused over the killing of the Italian intelligence officer Nicola Calipari.
Israel is a party to the Council of Europe's European Convention on Extradition, which lets states refuse to surrender their own nationals, and Israeli law allows a citizen to be extradited only on condition that any sentence is served in Israel. Israel ratified the UN Convention against Torture in 1991, but the UN Committee against Torture said in 1994 that the convention had not been incorporated into Israeli law.
Parallel cases in Europe
Rome prosecutors attended a coordination meeting at Eurojust in The Hague with authorities from 10 other countries running related inquiries: Portugal, Spain, France, Sweden, Poland, Belgium, the Netherlands, Australia, Finland and Slovakia, L'Indipendente and il Giornale reported. The flotilla's Italian lawyers wrote in June that Rome had already sent a request for assistance to another European judicial authority investigating the same facts.
France's national anti-terrorism prosecutor opened a preliminary inquiry into war crimes and torture on 5 June after a referral from Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot. A second inquiry followed, and the two now cover flotillas intercepted in October 2025, April 2026 and May 2026. The central office against crimes against humanity is investigating, and no investigating judge had been appointed by September.
A judge at Spain's Audiencia Nacional agreed in July to investigate Zamir and a second senior naval commander over the unlawful detention of crews from Spanish-flagged boats in October 2025, and asked the International Criminal Court whether his inquiry could proceed alongside its own. Turkey has issued an international arrest warrant for Netanyahu over the flotilla interceptions.
Italy is a member of the International Criminal Court, which can examine crimes committed aboard vessels registered to its member states. The Comoros used that basis to refer Israel's 2010 raid on the Mavi Marmara, in which 10 Turkish nationals were killed. The court's prosecutor closed the examination in 2014 on gravity grounds, and judges asked her in 2015 to reconsider.
Israel had not publicly answered Rome's June request by 18 October, and under the Court of Cassation's reading of Article 10 an Italian judge cannot order the arrest of any of the 14 suspects unless they are on Italian soil.
