On 25 March, an FRFI journalist was among those attending a press conference addressed by five of the recently released Filton 24 prisoners. Kamran Ahmed, Teuta Hoxha, Heba Muraisi, Maddy Norman and Qesser Zuhrah detailed the punitive way they had been treated by the British ‘criminal justice system’ during their incarceration since 2024.  Whilst they stressed that nothing they had to endure in any way parallels the horrors heaped on the defiant people of Palestine and, in particular, onto Palestinian prisoners, their descriptions of the system’s deliberate infliction of isolation, humiliation and pain onto the prisoners demonstrated the lengths the British Labour government is prepared to go to in order to try to prevent pro-Palestine direct action. 

As Maddy Norman told the press conference: ‘In weaponising counterterrorist legislation to silence and criminalise pro-Palestinian activism, all the government has succeeded in proving is that the fight for a liberated Palestine is inseparable from the fight against state repression.’

The press conference was also addressed by Dr Asim Qureshi, research director at Cage International, specialising in counter terrorism policy.

The powerful contributions from the released prisoners were framed in a strong political context by the introduction from the press conference’s chair and  Filton 24 Defence Committee spokesperson lisa minerva luxx, which we publish below:

Today, it is a month since 17 of the Filton 24 were released from prisons across the UK, following five others who had been released two weeks prior after a jury failed to convict them of a single charge. The majority of the 17 had been imprisoned for 15 months as terrorist prisoners and are now on strict bail conditions; they still have not faced trial themselves. Today, you will hear about the treatment they experienced, the historic hunger strike, and the events that led to a case which is changing the face of British protest laws.

To situate us, as we sit here at this conference, over 1 million people in Lebanon (1/7th of the population) are navigating displacement after a new wave of bombings and evacuation orders by the IDF. Between a quarter and a fifth of the country has now been occupied by the Zionist entity. Thousands are dead, injured, sleep-deprived, and psychologically battered. Last week, just as had happened in Gaza two years ago, flyers were dropped over the capital city. This time, the flyers spoke of the ‘great success’ in Gaza, threatening a new reality in Lebanon; to “Gaza-fy” Beirut.

The defendants I am sat beside, and all the ones we are here to represent, are being accused of trying to stop the brutality spreading this far, again, and again.

These defendants have been vilified by senior members of the labour party and used as political pawns, evidenced in the FOIs we received detailing the myriad meetings held between a mix of representatives of the attorney general’s office, the British policing minister, home office representatives, the Israeli ambassador, and the CEO of Israel’s largest weapons manufacturer Elbit Systems. Who are the alleged “victim” in this case. That mix of people should never have been in a meeting together if we truly had an independent judiciary.

Elbit Systems employees, in interviews, boast of their great success in the genocide. They are the central operating system of the IDF and, under the direction of Martin Fausset, they operate here, in Britain.

Elbit Systems have been telling the world through their marketing taglines for years that they ‘battle test’ their weapons on the captive populations in Palestine, much as they test and refine their violent methods of occupation.

What is happening in Lebanon now, as we sit here today, should be a sufficient reminder that Palestine is just the start of a brutal colonial vision of ‘greater israel’ Which the UK started, and the UK continues to reinforce, and the UK continues to demand our compliance.

Empowered citizens, however, will not comply.

Our generation changed irrevocably when we heard the crack in the voice of the Red Crescent volunteer as she read Surah al-Fatiha 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 earlier. 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.

We are here because the government tried everything in their power to stop their citizens from taking direct action.

We are here because citizens took direct action after they tried everything in their power to stop the government from participating in a genocide.

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 case is the name of a Labour Party witch-hunt, which swept up anyone suspected of having some connection to an action in Bristol; it was meant to be a warning shot sounding out across the nation.

What you’re about to hear is the result of a project called Operation Recomply, as it was named by British Counter Terrorism.

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.

These are the testimonies of ordinary people who will not be defeated. Whether they themselves were involved in the action or not, they have been pushed to represent an entire age of people who will not comply. Until Palestine and Lebanon are free.