london, united kingdom
—
Heba Muraishi knows exactly what is happening to her body.
“My organs are slowly but surely shutting down,” she said late Monday by phone from HMP Newhall, a prison in northern England.
The 31-year-old Londoner and pro-Palestinian activist is refusing food as part of Britain’s longest organized hunger strike in decades.
“I am trying to do my best every day, conscious of every minute that passes,” said Muraishi, who is on the 73rd day of his hunger strike. CNN was unable to speak directly to her by phone inside the prison. Instead, members of the campaign group Palestine Prisoners relayed CNN’s questions to her and shared their answers.
Muraishi and Kamran Ahmed, 28, who are now on their 66th day, began a hunger strike late last year as part of a group of eight imprisoned pro-Palestinian activists protesting what they see as long pre-trial detention and repression of political opposition linked to the Gaza war.
Mr Murasi and Mr Ahmed were arrested in November 2024 as part of the so-called “Filton 24”, a group of activists linked to Action for Palestine, accused of breaking into and destroying a British research and development facility belonging to Israel’s largest arms manufacturer Elbit Systems near Filton, west of London. This activist group aims to disrupt the operations of weapons manufacturers with ties to the Israeli government.
Prosecutors claim the Filton incident caused an estimated £1 million ($1.3 million) in damages. Mr Muraishi and Mr Ahmed are charged with robbery, criminal damage and conspiracy. They deny the charges and are awaiting trial.
Neither have been charged under the Terrorism Act, but they were initially detained and interrogated under counter-terrorism powers, along with other members of the Filton Group. Human rights groups have condemned the use of the bill, saying it governs the treatment of activists in detention and paved the way for the government’s subsequent ban on the Palestinian Action as a terrorist organization last summer.
The ban on Palestinian action puts the group on the same legal footing as Hamas, ISIS and al-Qaeda and has sparked a heated debate in the UK about the government’s use of anti-terrorism laws and restrictions on freedom of expression. Then-Home Secretary Yvette Cooper insisted the move was necessary to protect national security, saying the group was not a “non-violent organization” and had a history of “unacceptable criminal victimization”. Rights groups and civil rights campaigners have accused the government of gross overreach in suppressing legitimate protests in the country.
Demands of hunger strikers
Muraishi and Ahmed, along with six other detained activists, began a hunger strike after a letter from their lawyer to the Interior Ministry went unanswered, raising concerns about prolonged pre-trial detention. Rewi Chiaramelo, 22, has been fasting every other day due to diabetes, while Umar Khalid, also 22, resumed his hunger strike over the weekend after a short hiatus.
The activists have been held on remand without trial or conviction since their arrest, exceeding the six-month pre-trial detention period set by the Crown Prosecution Service in England and Wales. Muraishi and Ahmed are scheduled to stand trial until June 2026, by which time they will have spent 20 months in detention.
The hunger strikers are demanding immediate bail, the lifting of what they claim are communications restrictions, an end to the government’s ban on Palestinian action, and the closure of Elbit Systems’ 16 sites in the UK. They are also demanding a fair trial and claim the government is withholding relevant documents related to their case.
A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said the pair would receive a fair trial and said the ministry had held a meeting with health authorities and the prisoners’ lawyers regarding their health care, adding that the hunger strikers were being “managed in line with the long-standing policy of having daily access to prisons and medical staff.”
“They face serious charges, but no government has been able to agree to their requests. Many of their requests relate to ongoing legal proceedings, including immediate bail, and this is a matter for an independent judge,” the spokesperson said.
Muraishi also hopes to be transferred closer to his family. Last year, she was transferred to a prison hundreds of miles away from her disabled mother, who is seriously ill and scheduled to undergo brain surgery this spring.
The strike comes as the government’s ban on Palestinian action is being separately challenged through a process known as judicial review. The case will be heard over three days in December, with a verdict expected in the coming weeks.
After fasting for 10 weeks, Muraishi experienced involuntary muscle spasms and severe chest pain, leading doctors to warn of a possible cardiovascular collapse, according to Palestine Prisoners magazine. Currently, she weighs approximately 49 kilograms (108 pounds) and is unable to sit upright for long periods of time.
Muraishi told CNN that a hunger strike is a last resort.
“They had an opportunity to resolve it months ago because a letter was written to them (ministers) telling them about the hunger strike, but they chose to look the other way,” she said.
A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said that to protect the independence of the judiciary, “we must not interfere in ongoing legal proceedings.”
Asked what kind of impact the refusal to meet ministers was having, Muraishi said he was not surprised.
“I didn’t go into this naively,” she said. She accused the country’s leaders of being “spineless cowards” who “stood silently by” as thousands of Palestinian children were killed by Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip since the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on Israel.
Muraishi and other hunger strikers detailed abuses in prison in a letter to the government, but said their complaints were “met with silence.”
“Concerns about welfare and procedures can be raised through established legal and administrative channels,” a Ministry of Justice spokesperson told CNN. “Inmates can also request a meeting with the relevant governor or prison staff at any time.”
Ahmed’s condition is also rapidly deteriorating. Doctors told him last week that his heart muscle was shrinking and his heart rate had dropped to 40 beats per minute. He also began experiencing intermittent hearing loss, which could indicate neurological damage, said his sister Shamima Alam.
James Timpson, Minister for Prisons, Probation and Reoffending Reduction, said there were on average more than 200 hunger strikes in UK prisons each year.
Mr Timpson told ITV News: “I do not treat any prisoner differently than any other prisoner,” adding: “As such, we will not be meeting with any prisoners or their representatives.”
But Alam argues that the activists’ protests are fundamentally different. She drew parallels with other hunger strikers protesting for recognition as political prisoners, including Irish republican Bobby Sands, who died in Northern Ireland’s Maze Prison on the 66th day of his 1981 hunger strike, and with the suffragettes who fought for women’s right to vote and are now proudly commemorated by the British state.
“We should already recognize that this is a tactic used to push certain political demands. That’s what’s happening here,” Alam said of the activists’ hunger strike.
“They won’t stop, because what they want as political demands is more important than what they think about their lives.”
Human rights organizations, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the United Nations Special Rapporteur’s Group, expressed grave concern about the conditions of hunger strikers and warned that prolonged pretrial detention and restrictions on communication represented a widespread erosion of freedom of expression and the right to protest.
Organizers Defend Our Juries said police have arrested more than 2,700 people since July at protests against the ban on Palestinian action, many of whom are being held under terrorism laws for actions such as holding up placards that say “against genocide and in support of Palestinian action.”
Francesca Nadin, from the Palestinian Prisoners’ Association, said the hunger strikers’ lawsuit and growing support for lifting the Palestinian ban reflected growing public concern about the right to free speech.
“The fundamental democratic rights that we are supposed to have in this country are now being attacked,” she said. “This is also part of the hunger strike, which is to raise public awareness of this issue.”
Last week, more than 50 MPs urged Attorney General David Lamy to reconsider the government’s position and called on it to engage with the legal representatives of hunger strikers as a “humanitarian act”.
Lamy has not yet responded to their letters.
