20th October 2025
To the Home Secretary,
We are writing on behalf of prisoners for Palestine in Britain, regarding their false imprisonment as a direct result of the UK’s direct involvement in Israel’s ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people.
After exhausting all legal avenues to win our basic rights, you leave us with no choice but to take drastic action. On Sunday 2nd November 2025, to commemorate the anniversay of the Balfour declaration, we, Prisoners for Palestine, will begin an open ended hunger strike, and other prisoners may join the hunger strike if the demands are not met.
It is morally and legally imperative that the government immediately fulfils the following demands in order to end the hunger strike:
1. End all censorship
We demand to be able to send and receive communications without restriction, surveillance, or interference from the prison administration. Freedom of expression is a fundamental human right that is vital for prisoners, whose voices are already systematically silenced. Censorship inside prisons is a tool of control used to punish resistance. Letters, phone calls, political statements, books and all other forms of expression must be respected.
2. Immediate bail
We demand that we be released from custody while awaiting trial. Holding people on remand, in some cases indefinitely, is a deliberate abuse of power, used to punish prisoners before they have even faced a court or been convicted of any crime. Some of us will have been imprisoned for nearly two years without a conviction. The right to a fair trial must include the right to prepare for it in freedom, not behind bars.
3. Right to a fair trial
We demand the right to a fair trial, which cannot happen until all relevant documents related to our cases are released in full. This includes all meetings between British and Israeli state officials, the British police, the attorney general, Elbit Systems representatives, and any others involved in coordinating the ongoing witch-hunt of actionists and campaigners.
We also demand the release of government records of all Elbit Systems UK exports from the last five years. We have the right to know what arms are being made and exported from the UK, especially when they are used to commit genocide.
4. Deproscribe
We demand the immediate dropping of all terror-related charges and ‘links’, and an end to the use of the Prevent strategy. The government’s use of counter-terror laws to target those engaged in protest and direct action is unjustified and unprecedented, and must be stopped.
In light of this, we demand that the British government deproscribe Palestine Action. Direct action is not terrorism. It is a legitimate tactic deployed when democratic channels fail to reflect the will of the people. When the government breaks the law, citizens have the moral responsibility to act in defence of life, human rights, and collective dignity.
We also demand an apology from Yvette Cooper for spearheading a smear campaign in a cynical attempt to justify her decision to proscribe Palestine Action. Her claim that Palestine Action was a violent organisation “possibly funded by Iran” has no basis in fact.
5. Shut Elbit down
Many of us are imprisoned for allegedly taking action against Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest weapons manufacturer. Since 2012, Elbit has won 25 public contracts in the UK totalling more than £355m. Now, the Ministry of Defence is preparing to sign a £2.7 billion contract with Elbit that would designate it as a “strategic partner” and see the company train 60,000 British troops each year.
We demand that the government does not use taxpayer´s money to fund the machinery of genocide, and scrap this contract. Furthermore, we demand that all Elbit systems’ sites and its subsidiaries in the UK are permanently shut down.
At the time of writing, there are 33 prisoners who are being held on remand for taking direct action for Palestine in Britain. They will be held on remand for up to two years without a conviction, breaking the pre-trial custody time limit of 182 days. This is an unprecedented attack on protest in this country. The majority of these prisoners were arrested under counter-terror legislation before the proscription of Palestine Action, even though they are being prosecuted under criminal, not terror, legislation. This evidences the fact that their treatment is completely disproportionate.
It is clear that anti-terror legislation is being used in these cases as an intimidation tactic against activists, and that their imprisonment was part of a carefully conceived plan to proscribe Palestine Action. The prisoners are now being retrospecitvely punished for the proscription, for example with the use of the Prevent strategy and JEXU. The ‘terror link’ that has been introduced to their cases will not be put before the jury, denying them the right to a fair trial. Government advisors have explicitly stated that these cases do not reach the threshold for the definition of terrorism, being based solely on property damage. This seriously calls into question the integrity of our legal system and judicial process.
This state persecution occurs while the UK government continues to assist the Israeli military with intelligence in real time during its ongoing genocide in Gaza, and allows companies such as Elbit Systems UK to export millions of pounds worth of arms to Israel.The harsh treatment of the prisoners is a direct result of the close relationship between Elbit Systems and the British government, since they dared to interrupt the production of the miltary-industrial complex. Evidence clearly shows that there is collusion between Elbit systems, the British government, police, attorney general and Israeli officials through undisclosed meetings. The British state manipulates the machinery of justice to incarcerate prisoners with no reasonable justification, following the example set by British colonisers who introduced administrative detenion to Palestine during the British mandate. This continues to be used today to illegally detain and oppress the Palestinian people.
From the time of the British mandate and the Balfour declaration, the British state has been instrumental in the subjugation of the Palestinian people, denying them the right to exist. As the original colonisers of Palestine, Britain continues to see it as a duty to maintain this colonisation through its open and well-documented collusion with Elbit and the rogue state of Israel. On the contrary, it is our duty as citizens, both inside and outside prison, to do everything in our power to end the illegal occupation of Palestine and uphold international law, something that the British state has roundly failed to do.
Please respond to this letter by 24th October 2025.
Sincerely,
Prisoners for Palestine
prisoners4palestine@proton.me