Hunger-striker’s family demands reversal of “cruel” move to distant prison

The family of anti-genocide political prisoner and hunger-striker Heba Muraisi have demanded that the authorities move her back to Bronzefield prison in Surrey, near her family and friends, after the government transferred her 200 miles north in a transparently punitive measure.

The demand comes as an apparently coordinated campaign among the right-wing, pro-Israel press targets Muraisi for daring to ask for vitamins to help minimise the damage done by her hunger-strike. She is refusing food in protest against the Starmer government’s collaboration in Israel’s genocide in Gaza and against Starmer’s naked contempt for law and process in his ‘lawfare’ war on pro-Palestine speech and activism.

The media campaign also, of course, leaves out any meaningful coverage of that war and the hunger-strikers’ demand for a fair trial. The ‘MSM’ are also ignoring the government’s consultations with the Israeli embassy about the prosecutions of the wider ‘Filton 24’ anti-genocide group.

Political prisoners

The Filton 24 have been imprisoned for a year and a half so far without trial. Many of them face another year or more in jail before their case comes to court. As they sit in prison, ‘justice’ secretary David Lammy is moving to abolish jury trials for offences like the criminal damage they are charged with. This is a transparent reaction to the fact that juries have frequently exercised their right to acquit defendants because they agree that any offences were to prevent or at least inhibit the far greater crime of genocide.

Even though the 24 are only charged with criminal damage of an Israeli-owned weapons factory, Starmer and his cronies have used the Terrorism Act to deny them bail.

Francesca Nadin, Prisoners for Palestine spokesperson and Heba’s next of kin, told Skwawkbox that the decision to move Heba was a “cruel” attack. She condemned the “witch hunt” against the activists by ‘counter-terror’ officers. Heba’s family is demanding her immediate return to the nearby Bronzefield prison if the government will not do the right thing and release the prisoners until trial:

Heba was cruelly torn away from her family and comrades in London, as in the the words of the ‘counter-terror’ prison unit, she was ‘being influenced’ by her comrades there. Yet another example of the political witch hunt the British state is conducting.

Not content with ruining the prisoners lives by locking them up without trial, they insist that any dissent must be crushed immediately. Once again they fail, as Heba stands strong in her convictions and continues her hunger strike. We demand that she be moved back to Bronzefield.

Green party leader Zack Polanski, one of the few politicians not pretending the hunger strikers don’t exist, would agree:

 

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