Pro-Palestinian activists are carrying out one of the UK’s longest ever hunger strikes. Their families say they won’t stop
By Kara Fox, CNN
London, UK (CNN) — Heba Muraisi knows exactly what is happening to her body.
“My organs are slowly but surely shutting down,” she said late Monday via phone call from HMP New Hall, a prison in northern England.
The 31-year-old Londoner and pro-Palestinian activist is refusing food as part of a coordinated hunger strike – the longest the United Kingdom has seen in decades.
“I’m pushing through each day, consciously aware of each minute that goes by,” said Muraisi, now on day 73 of her hunger strike. CNN was not able to speak with her directly by phone in prison. Instead, a member of the campaign group Prisoners for Palestine relayed CNN’s questions to her and then shared her answers.
Muraisi and Kamran Ahmed, 28, who is on day 66, began their hunger strike late last year, as part of a group of eight imprisoned pro-Palestinian activists protesting their lengthy pre-trial detention and what they see as a crackdown on political dissent related to the war in Gaza.
Both Muraisi and Ahmed were arrested in November 2024 as part of the so-called “Filton 24,” a group of Palestine Action-linked activists accused of breaking into and vandalizing a UK research and development site near Filton, west of London, belonging to Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest weapons manufacturer. The activist group aims to disrupt the operations of weapons manufacturers connected to the Israeli government.
Prosecutors allege the Filton incident caused an estimated £1 million ($1.3 million) in damage. Muraisi and Ahmed have been charged with burglary, criminal damage, and conspiracy. They deny the charges and are awaiting trial.
Although neither have been charged under terrorism legislation, they, along with others from the Filton group, were initially held and interrogated under counterterrorism powers. Human rights groups decried the use of such legislation, saying that it has shaped the activists’ treatment in custody and paved the way for the government’s later move to ban the group, proscribing Palestine Action as a terrorist organization last summer.
The Palestine Action ban – which put the group on the same legal footing as Hamas, ISIS and al Qaeda – sparked a fierce debate in Britain about the government’s use of counterterrorism laws and the limits of freedom of expression. Then-Home Secretary Yvette Cooper framed the move as necessary to safeguard national security, saying the group was “not a non-violent organization” and had a history of “unacceptable criminal damage.” Rights groups and civil liberties campaigners accuse the government of a grave overreach to clamp down on legitimate protest in the country.
Hunger strikers’ demands
Muraisi and Ahmed began their hunger strike alongside six other detained activists after letters from their lawyers to the Home Office, raising concerns about their prolonged pre-trial detention, went unanswered. Twenty-two-year-old Lewie Chiaramello continues to fast on alternate days because of diabetes while Umar Khalid, also 22, restarted his hunger strike over the weekend after a short pause.
The activists have been held on remand – detained without trial or conviction – since their arrests, exceeding the six-month pre-trial custody limit set out by the Crown Prosecution Service for England and Wales. Muraisi and Ahmed are not due to stand trial until June 2026, by which time they will have been in custody for 20 months.
The hunger strikers are demanding to be released on bail immediately, an end to what they say are restrictions on their communications, the reversal of the government ban on Palestine Action, and the closure of the 16 sites where Elbit Systems operates in the UK. They are also demanding a fair trial and allege that the government has withheld relevant documents related to their case.
A justice ministry spokesperson said the pair would receive a fair trial and that the ministry had organized a meeting between health officials and the prisoners’ lawyers on their healthcare, adding that the hunger strikers are being “managed in line with longstanding policy with daily access to prison and healthcare staff.”
“They face serious charges, and no government could agree to their demands, many of which relate to ongoing legal proceedings, including immediate bail, which is a matter for independent judges,” the spokesperson said.
Muraisi is also asking to be transferred closer to her family. Last year, she was moved to a prison hundreds of miles 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 Palestine Action is separately being challenged through a process known as judicial review. The case was heard over three days in December and a decision expected in the coming weeks.
Worsening condition
After 10 weeks without food, Muraisi is experiencing involuntary muscular twitching and severe chest pains, according to Prisoners for Palestine, with her doctors warning of possible cardiovascular collapse. Now weighing about 49 kilograms (108 pounds), she is unable to sit upright for extended periods.
Muraisi told CNN that undertaking a hunger strike was a last resort.
“A letter was written to them (ministers) telling them about the hunger strike, so they had the opportunity to resolve this months ago, but chose to look away,” she said.
The ministry of justice spokesperson said that in order to uphold judicial independence they “must not intervene in ongoing legal proceedings.”
Asked how ministers’ refusal to meet has affected her, Muraisi said she was not surprised.
“I didn’t go into this naively,” she said. She accused the country’s leaders of being “spineless cowards” who “stood by silently” amid the killings of thousands of Palestinian children by Israeli forces in Gaza since the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attacks on Israel.
Muraisi and the other hunger strikers said they detailed mistreatment in prisons in their letter to the government, but that their overtures were “met with silence.”
The justice ministry spokesperson told CNN that “concerns about welfare and process can be raised through established legal and administrative channels,” and that “prisoners can also request a meeting with the relevant governor or prison staff at any time.”
Ahmed’s condition is also rapidly breaking down. Doctors told him last week that his heart muscle is shrinking, and his heart rate has dropped to 40 beats per minute. He has also begun experiencing intermittent hearing loss that may indicate neurological damage, according to his sister, Shamima Alam.
James Timpson, the Minister of State for Prisons, Probation and Reducing Reoffending, said that there are, on average, more than 200 hunger-strike incidents in UK prisons each year.
“I don’t treat any prisoners differently to others,” Timpson told ITV News, adding: “That is why we will not be meeting any prisoners or their representatives.
But Alam argues the activists’ protest is fundamentally different. She drew parallels to other hunger strikers protesting for recognition as political prisoners, including Irish republican Bobby Sands, who died on day 66 of his 1981 hunger strike, in Northern Ireland’s Maze Prison – and the suffragettes who fought for women’s right to vote and who are now proudly commemorated by the British state.
“We should be already aware that this is a tactic that is used to push certain political demands. That’s what’s happening here,” Alam said of the activists’ hunger strike.
“They’re not going to stop, because what they want for their political demand is more important than what they consider of their own life.”
Human rights bodies, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and a group of UN special rapporteurs, have expressed grave concern about the hunger strikers’ situation, also warning that prolonged pre-trial detention and restrictions on communication represent a broader erosion of free expression and protest rights.
Police have arrested more than 2,700 people at protests opposing the ban on Palestine Action since July, according to organizers Defend Our Juries, with many detained under terrorism legislation for actions including holding signs that read: “I oppose genocide, I support Palestine Action.”
Francesca Nadin of Prisoners for Palestine said the hunger strikers’ case – and growing support for overturning the ban on Palestine Action – reflect intensifying public concern over the right to free speech.
“It is our basic democratic rights that we supposedly have in this country that are now being attacked,” she said. “That’s part of the hunger strike as well – bringing this attention to this issue to the general public.”
Last week, more than 50 lawmakers urged Justice Secretary David Lammy to reconsider the government’s stance, calling on him to engage with the hunger strikers’ legal representatives as “an act of humanity.”
Lammy is yet to respond to their letter.
The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
