The friends of a Palestine Action-affiliated prisoner currently on hunger strike say she was left to lie on her cell floor with worsening chest pains while the prison refused repeated requests to call an ambulance.
Qesser Zuhrah, who is currently being held at HMP Bronzefield, has not eaten for more than 41 days after she joined a rolling hunger strike launched by imprisoned Palestine Action-affiliated prisoners over their treatment and the proscription of the direct action group.
The action is considered to be the biggest in the UK since the 1981 hunger strike by Irish Republican prisoners, led by Bobby Sands in Northern Ireland.
The prisoners, all accused of involvement with Palestine Action before it was proscribed in July, will have been in jail for over a year by the time they stand trial. Zuhrah will have spent 17 months awaiting trial by her court date.
Zuhrah’s friend, Niamh Grant, reported that Zuhrah had called her at 8:30pm “feeling dizzy and light-headed” with “chest pain radiating to her neck and shoulder”, shortness of breath and shaking limbs.
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“She lay down on the floor and couldn’t get up,” Grant told Middle East Eye.
Ella Moulsdale, Zuhrah’s next of kin, said that Zuhrah had repeatedly buzzed for a nurse and begged her to conduct basic medical tests.
“As she continued to be ignored, she then started to beg for an ambulance to come because she knew that something was happening,” Moulsdale said.
A prison officer told her to wait for the night nurse to start her shift at 11pm.
At 10:30pm the nurse arrived to take her vitals – a series of tests to measure key bodily functions – and an ECG (electrocardiogram) test. She said she would be back in 10 minutes with the test results.
‘Can you get an ambulance? I’m scared’
Hours passed – she did not return. Zuhrah remained immobile on the cell floor.
By 12:30am, the nurse had still not returned, so Zuhrah buzzed prison medical staff for help, saying “Can you ring an ambulance? I’m scared”. They hung up on her.
“I’ve got her on the phone and listening to her audibly in pain and unable to respond properly. And all I can do is ask her to breathe heavier so I can ensure that she’s still breathing. I’m not a first responder, I’m not a medical practitioner,” Grant told MEE.
‘All I can do is ask her to breathe heavier so I can ensure that she’s still breathing’
– Niamh Grant, friend of Qesser Zuhrah
“This is how people die in their cells. She could barely get up to call me, and all I could do was try to call for the nurse for her, and then get back to listening to her cry in pain and struggle to breathe.”
At 2am, the nurse returned and informed her that “you don’t decide if you go to hospital, I do.”
Both the Ministry of Justice and Sodexo Justice Services, which runs HMP Bronzefield, said they could not comment on individual cases.
Meanwhile, Zuhrah’s friends repeatedly called the prison requesting an ambulance, who they said “kept hanging up” on them. They tried ringing for ambulances directly, but were informed that this would have to be arranged through the prison.
“We were being told by ambulance operators that they have no power over whether an ambulance goes to a prison or not, because it is up to the prison whether they will accept an ambulance,” Moulsdale said.
“If someone collapses in a prison, they don’t get an ambulance sent to them. The prison gets to decide.”
NHS England declined to comment, saying that the issue “does not relate to NHS England national policy or operational issues”.
MEE asked the South East Ambulance Service to clarify if an ambulance was refused on the basis that the request had not been directly issued by the prison but did not receive a reply by the time of publication.
Sent to answer machine
From 8am onwards, four NHS doctors also repeatedly tried to contact the prison. James Smith, a doctor who supports the hunger strikers and their families, told MEE that he was put through to an answer machine when he called the prison.
“Several of us tried, and we were unable to get through to anyone. We tried to escalate our concerns, and tried to speak to anyone in a position of power, but were all unsuccessful,” Smith said.
According to Moulsdale, Zuhrah’s lawyer and MP Zarah Sultana also called the prison. Each time staff refused to provide updates on Zuhrah’s condition and whether or not she had been hospitalised.
At 9:30am, the prison finally called an ambulance after Zuhrah lost consciousness. The prison did not notify Zuhrah’s next of kin about her hospitalisation, despite promising they would.
Zuhrah was later discharged at 8:30pm and returned to her cell without a diagnosis or test results.
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Moulsdale said that when Zuhrah came to in the ambulance, she overheard the staff discussing troubling results of the ECG they had performed earlier in the night.
“It was about 12 hours earlier that something was flagged on their ECG and they still left her in her cell in pain on her floor until she passed out the next morning,” Moulsdale said.
Meanwhile, pressure is mounting on Justice Secretary David Lammy, as multiple MPs have written to him requesting urgent intervention. Lammy, who previously denied knowledge of the situation, either failed to respond to or refused to meet with MPs.
On Wednesday MP Sir Lindsay Hoyle, the Commons speaker, said Lammy’s lack of response was “totally unacceptable”.
Sultana wrote to Lammy again on Friday, urging him to take “meaningful action” and warning that the strikers’ lives are “now at immediate risk”.
Also on Friday, activists sprayed the MOJ building in central London with red paint to protest against Lammy’s refusal to meet the eight hunger strikers.
“We have brought the matter to David Lammy because he continues to ignore the friends and family, the lawyers of the hunger strikers,” a protester said in a video posted on social media.
“He ignores the fact that their lives are in imminent danger.”
