The final Palestine Action prisoner still on hunger strike has stopped drinking water, prompting a doctor to warn that he could die within days.
Umer Khalid, 22, has been on hunger strike since November in protest at criminal charges he faces in connection with alleged break-ins or criminal damage linked to Palestine Action. His protest was briefly paused over Christmas after he became unwell, but he resumed the strike 13 days ago.
Khalid and seven others stopped eating to demand the charges be dropped. All of the group deny the allegations. The other prisoners have since ended their hunger strikes, with the final three stopping 10 days ago after the government decided not to award a £2bn contract to Elbit Systems UK, an Israeli arms company subsidiary.
Khalid is now the only protester continuing the action and has escalated it by refusing fluids. He has a genetic condition, limb-girdle muscular dystrophy, which causes muscle weakness and wasting around major joints and leaves him particularly vulnerable.
In comments released by Prisoners for Palestine, Dr Rupa Marya warned that the situation had become critical.
“With no fluid intake, typically people die of acute kidney failure and other derangements within three to four days,” she said.
“With Khalid’s underlying health condition, he is at increased risk of death even sooner.”
She added: “By Monday, if the UK government continues to stall, we can expect this young man to be well in the process of dying if not dead.”
Dr Marya, who is suspended by the University of California in San Francisco over social media comments about Israel’s war in Gaza, has said the university violated her right to freedom of speech and is pursuing legal action against it.
Among those who ended their hunger strike earlier this month was Heba Muraisi, 31, who reached 72 days without food. That was one day short of the total reached by Irish republican hunger striker Kieran Doherty, the longest-lasting of the 10 men who died during the 1981 protest.
Prisoners for Palestine said the government’s decision not to grant Elbit Systems UK the Ministry of Defence contract — under which the company would have trained up to 60,000 British troops a year — met one of the group’s key demands. The campaign group said Elbit had won more than 10 public contracts since 2012, arguing that the decision marked a shift in official thinking.
The UK government has not commented publicly on Khalid’s condition.