The al-Maqrizi Center has received a letter from the families of Muslim detainees and prisoners in Bell Marsh Prison in the United Kingdom, stating that (Class A) prisoners and detainees in Belmarsh Prison had decided to launch an open hunger strike beginning Thursday 9 April due to a systematic campaign on the part of the prison administration to persecute Muslim prisoners and detainees, discriminate between them and non-Muslim prisoners, and conduct a humiliating and provocative campaign of inspection of any Muslim (strip searching them naked as their mothers bore them)!
The Belmarsh administration continues its crimes against their most basic devotional and familial rights by restricting their rights as stipulated in the regulations for British and world prisons.
The Belmarsh prison is located in the southeast of London and is a modern prison in the style of an American high-security prison, tantamount to an electronic jungle containing some of the leaders of the Irish Republican Army. It is in reality an infamous prison that has been called the “British Bastille” or the Guantanamo of the United Kingdom!
Among the most famous of the inmates of the prison currently, who is also taking part in the hunger strike, is Shaykh Abou Hamza al-Masri (Mustafa Kamel) who suffers from a number of illnesses, despite which the British government refuses to release him even under house arrest(!) because of his handicap (he has lost one of his eyes and his hands and has an severe affliction in one of his legs, as well as suffers from high-blood pressure, and diabetes and has special needs as an handicapped person who has lost his hands!)
There is also Baber Ahmed al-Manzour whose case is in the European Court of Human Rights appealing his deportation to America. And there are hundreds of Muslims from all nationalities around the globe but the large majority come from Pakistan and Bangladesh.
Based on the above-mentioned:
The al-Maqrizi Center condemns these systematic and continuing campaigns against Muslim prisoners and detainees in British prisons and especially those present in Belmarsh prison! We hold the British government completely responsible for the suffering of those Muslims in Belmarsh and elsewhere. At the same time we demand organziations concerned
Al-Maqrizi Center for Historical Studies
London
Monday, 17 Rabi’ al-Thani 1430
13 April 2009
