The following is a rush transcript of Press TV's interview with Hassan.

The Muslim members of the convoy had just begun the morning prayer — the Fajr prayer — that's when the Israeli forces decided to mount their attack, they came from the sides on commando boats and threw stun grenades and used rubber bullets against the ship that was repelled by water canons. Then the Israeli soldiers decided to come by helicopter and from helicopter as well they were using rubber bullets against the people on the ground. Once the choppers landed on the ship, there was a scuffle on the roof between the volunteers on the ship and the soldiers. The volunteers of course had no weapons whatsoever, and the soldiers had machine guns, pistols and all sorts of deadly weapons and it was in those scuffles that a number of people were killed.

We didn't understand how serious it was until we saw the first fatality. It was a friend of mine a person that had helped the press get Internet access on the ship, it was his job to help setup laptops on the ship he was shot straight in the forehead by an Israeli bullet, which indicates that it was not an act of self defense by the soldier but a set up shot which he had time to take, and I have been told that my friend was taking pictures at the time — he was a friend of all the press really — he was taking pictures at the time that an Israeli soldier just approached him and shot him directly in the head.

That was a shock to all of us and was followed by several more fatalities and that's when the organizers decided that although they were determined to get this aid convoy through, they were trying to prevent a massacre so they raised a white flag to surrender and told the Israeli forces to stop firing and that they would cooperate with whatever they wanted but the firing did continue for several more minutes as we clambered down into the hole of the ship to escape the firing.
 

Well we were held for 24 hours by the Israelis on the ship, at gunpoint. Most of us were placed in stressed positions, the Israelis didn't know I was a member of the press and I was held in that position for 2-3 hours, later they found out I was a member of the press, instead of putting my hands behind my back they put my hands in front of me but many other people were held 16-18 hours in stress positions where they almost completely lost blood circulation in their hands, we weren't allowed to stand up we weren't allowed to talk, not even allowed to use the toilet without pleading and begging the Israeli soldiers to do so, and even then they often refused.

Eventually we reached the port of Ashdod where we taken by force, we were all asked to sign a form agreeing to be deported even though we were taken there involuntary we were forced to go there, we didn't want to go to Israel. The activists were pretty clear they wanted to go straight to Gaza avoiding the Israeli waters but the Israelis put us in prison for illegally entering Israeli as they claimed.

In the prison the rules changed somewhat. It was the good cop bad cop routine on the ship, we were treated pretty much like animals but in the prison I think by that stage the Israelis had become aware of how big the media fallout from this was and the live pictures that had gone out were quite horrific so they began to treat us a bit more like human beings. They, of course wanted our cooperation later on, when they wanted to throw us out of the country they didn't want us to try mount illegal challenge which two people did try to do — and of course those two people were beaten quite severely and were literally dragged to the airport and thrown on a Turkish airline along with the rest of us and eventually we were taken to Istanbul.