One of the lawyers representing the 23 activists, Fahmi Abd Moin, said this after a “casual conversation” with them in Istanbul, Turkey.

“They said they were treated badly. Their hair was pulled, they were slapped in the face, and given food which, by their description, was meant for animals.

“They also drank tap water from the prison toilet,” Berita Harian reported him as saying.

Apart from Fahmi, the four other human rights lawyers representing the 23 Malaysian volunteers are Dir Kheizwan Kamaruddin, Azril Amin, Ahmad Nazrin Abu Bakar and Luqman Mazlan.

Fahmi said the lawyers will gather information from the volunteers once they are back in Malaysia and may consider sending a full report to the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC).

“Were they tortured and what kind of treatment did they receive from the Zionist regime? If any actions were taken against them by the regime, we will consider submitting a full report to the UNHRC.

“This is to ensure that the Zionist regime does not escape accountability for its treatment of our volunteers,” he said.

All the volunteers were detained by Israeli forces last Thursday and taken to Ketziot prison in the Negev Desert before being released yesterday.

Yesterday, Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said the 23 Malaysians were on their way home.

The group boarded a special flight to Istanbul from Ramon Airport in southern Israel at 6.45pm (Malaysian time) yesterday and are staying there for a night before returning home to Malaysia.