An Island Exclusive: The Gazette can reveal that Island man Peter Venner could be back home with his partner by the weekend.

A Gazette source revealed that the first batch of foreign activists taken prisoner on board a six-ship humanitarian aid flotilla seized in an Israel Navy raid en-route to the Gaza Strip have been deported this evening on three planes.

The deportation was sparked after the mounting world criticism over the assault on the six aid ships.

An Israeli official confirmed to the Gazette that all 680 activists have been released, including two dozen Israel had threatened earlier to prosecute on the charge of assaulting its troops.

The official confirmed that a busload of Turkish prisoners had already left the Be’er Sheva jail where Peter and the activists have been kept imprisoned since their capture in the early hours on Sunday morning (May 31).

“It was agreed that the detainees would be deported immediately”, the spokesman said.

The 36 activists from Britain were processed in and around Israel’s port of Ashdod on Monday evening, where the six ships of the blockade-running convoy had been escorted after a raid on a Turkish-flagged vessel left nine people dead. The spokesman confirmed.

Pick up a copy of this weeks Gazette on Friday for the full story.