Palestine Action-linked remand prisoner Umer Khalid admitted to hospital

London, United Kingdom – A British pro-Palestine remand prisoner whose hunger strike brought him to the brink of death is being treated in hospital again, his family understands, renewing fears for his health.

Umer Khalid, 22, last spoke to his mother, Shabana, by phone on January 26 from Wormwood Scrubs prison in London. He had been rushed to intensive care a day earlier with a dangerously slow heart rate and organ failure. Soon after, he ended his 17-day hunger strike protest.

She has not heard from him since. The prison informed her on January 28 that he had returned to hospital and was being monitored.

But Khalid’s mother told Al Jazeera that prison authorities are not forthcoming with further information about his condition or level of care, despite her repeated calls and emails.

“I fear for his life,” she told Al Jazeera on Friday. “Mentally, he’s probably stressed and distraught.

“We’re not having contact with anybody. I hope he’s doing OK, but I don’t know because I don’t know what’s wrong with him.”

She said that when they last spoke, Khalid sounded tired and complained of a dry mouth; towards the end of his hunger strike, he had also been refusing liquids in an escalation of his protest.

“He was just lying down and taking some rest because he just felt really tired. He was too weak to stand up,” she said.

In a statement to Al Jazeera, the UK Ministry of Justice said prisoners were managed in line with policy.

“This includes regular checks by medical professionals, heart monitoring and blood tests, and support to help them eat and drink again. If deemed appropriate by healthcare teams, prisoners will be taken to hospital,” a spokesperson said.

Khalid is among five activists accused of breaking into the UK’s largest airbase, RAF Brize Norton, in Oxfordshire, last June and spray-painting two Voyager refuelling and transport planes. The activists all deny the charges against them of damaging property and entering a prohibited place for a purpose prejudicial to the UK’s safety.

The incident, which was claimed by Palestine Action, caused millions of pounds’ worth of damage, according to the British government, which later proscribed Palestine Action as a “terrorist” organisation. Critics have condemned the ban as illiberal overreach, given that the direct action group’s stated objective is to counter Israel’s genocidal war against Palestinians and what it says is British complicity in it by disrupting the UK arms industry.

Earlier this week, a jury acquitted six other Palestine Action-linked detainees of aggravated burglary during a 2024 raid on ⁠a factory operated by the Israeli defence firm Elbit in Bristol.

Khalid, who suffers from limb-girdle muscular dystrophy, a condition that causes muscle weakness and wasting, is part of a collective of eight remand prisoners linked to Palestine Action that began a rolling hunger strike in November. All have since ended their protests.

Friends and family of the other hunger strikers have previously told Al Jazeera that when their loved ones were hospitalised, prison authorities did not provide regular updates about their health.

His trial date is set for January 2027, by which time he would have spent a year and a half in prison – well beyond the standard six-month pre-trial detention limit.