By JPOST.COM STAFF, YAAKOV KATZCensored pics(photo credit: Hurriet)Turkey’s top daily, Hurriet on Sunday published pictures of Shayetet 13 soldiers – helpless, possibly unconscious, badly beaten and bloodied.The paper claimed these images were censored by Israel by being deleted from memory-cards when the activists’ cameras were in Israeli hands.RELATED:Mavi Marmara: Go back to AuschwitzWhy was the IDF duped?'They had murder in their eyes'IDF spokesperson said the images, difficult though they are to watch, prove the claims made by IDF soldiers that they fired only because their lives were in danger, those aboard wnated to take Israeli lives. This proves the restraint with which the soldiers acted, the IDF said, the pictures could have been prevented, but because the Shayetet 13 warriors were aware of the sensitivity of the situation and were most careful to distinguish between peace activists and fighters, they came to harm.The images, of soldiers dragged along the floor, down staircases and of fighters with iron bars guarding a cabin door, seem actually to corroborate the IDF reports that the soldiers were attacked, and were in danger of being held as hostages. Charges denied by flotilla organizers.On Saturday The Jerusalem Post reported the IDF had identified one of the passengers aboard the Mavi Marmara, which navy commandos commandeered earlier this week, as the ringleader of a group of mercenaries who were recruited from a city in northwest Turkey, according to new details from the military’s ongoing investigation of the Gaza flotilla.The IDF identified a group of about 50 men – of the 700 on board – who were well-trained and were stationed throughout the ship, mostly on the upper deck, where they laid an ambush for the IDF soldiers who rappelled onto the deck from helicopters.
