PRO-PALESTINE activists imprisoned for taking direct action against weapon suppliers to Israel condemned the British government today for weaponising counter-terrorism powers.

Five hunger strikers of the Filton 24 spoke out for the first time since their release from pre-trial detention to expose the violence they faced from the prison service.

Kamran Ahmed, Teuta Hoxha, Heba Muraisi, Madeleine Norman, and Qessar Zuhrah highlighted their experiences in prisons, describing assaults and dehumanising treatment, as well as apparent tactics by officers to break their willpower.

Ms Muraisi said officers used chainsaws to rip through her door in a pre-dawn raid and dragged her barefoot into the street, while Ms Zuhrah said she was “subjected to a calculated regime of isolation.”

“One day, after two prisoners had died in the prison in a week, I begged the guards to unlock a severely claustrophobic and suicidal prisoner,” Ms Zuhrar said.

“They responded by assaulting me. Two male guards grabbed my arms, exposed my body, dragged me up a metal staircase, and threw me into my cell against the metal bed frame.

“The second time they assaulted me was for crying. The guards made sure I never forgot the threat of violence.”

She said that officials denied her electrolytes during her hunger strike, adding: “They wanted to push me to the point of death to scare me into stopping.

“We do not count our losses, because whatever we endured pales in comparison to the people in Palestine, Lebanon, and now Iran as the UK, USA and the zionist state wage a regional genocide.”

Ms Hoxha said that treatment “got harsher” after Palestine Action was designated as a terrorist organisation, saying: “This hunger strike peel[ed] back the layers of cruelty this government is capable of against its own citizens in order to protect its foreign genocidal project.”

“They were willing to let us die for a ban that was later proved to be unlawful.

“We partook in a tradition of resistance practised by [Palestinians] as they faced systematic abuse in zionist cages, including rapes, rapes by bestiality and now the impending death penalty, targeted only at Palestinians.”

Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails have levelled multiple allegations of rape, including torture that involved being mounted by guard dogs. Footage of five reservist soldiers using a knife to sodomise a prisoner in 2024 resulted in their being charged with aggravated abuse and causing serious bodily harm, though the charges were later quietly dropped.

Speaking to reporters, Lisa Minerva Luxx of the Filton 24 Defence Committee said that while Britain “continues to reinforce and demand our compliance” in “a brutal colonial vision of Greater Israel,” citizens were not willing to comply.

“Our generation has changed irrevocably,” she said.

“We changed when we heard the crack in the voice of the Red Crescent volunteer as she read Surah al Fatiha [the opening surah of the Koran] to Hind Rajab, whose own mouth was filling with blood.

“We changed when we witnessed the shreds of Sidra Hassouna’s body hanging above the yard she had played in only hours before.

“We knew our government was forcing us to be complicit in war crimes, but we had changed, and this is now the age in which British citizens refuse to remain powerless.”

Ms Minerva Luxx said that activists took direct action “after they tried everything in their power to stop the government from participating in genocide,” saying: “After all the democratic routes failed, swathes of people decided to bypass the government and go directly to the source: the weapons factories.

“The Filton 24 is the name of a Labour Party witch hunt which swept up anyone suspected of having some connection to an action in Bristol, and it was meant to be a warning shot across the nation.

“Unfortunately for them, it backfired and popularised direct action.

“One day, when people no longer have anything to lose, it will be commonly accepted that stopping the flow of weapons was the only logical thing to do.”