UK pro-Palestine activist arrested weeks after being released on bail 

London, United Kingdom – Qesser Zuhrah, a young pro-Palestine activist who was released on bail last month, has been arrested again.

In footage shared on social media, the 21-year-old is seen on Monday morning being handcuffed by masked police officers, taken from her home in Watford, near London, and placed into a car destined for prison.

Lisa Minerva Luxx, a campaigner supporting Zuhrah, told Al Jazeera they believed she was arrested “because of an Instagram story she posted, which allegedly encouraged people to take ‘direct action’”.

Herfordshire Police told Al Jazeera that a 21-year-old woman was arrested and remains in custody, without naming Zuhrah. They said she was “on suspicion” of intentionally encouraging a crime and the “encouragement of terrorism”.

Zuhrah, who was first detained in late 2024, is among a collective of defendants known as the “Filton 24”. They are alleged to have raided an Elbit Systems UK factory in Filton, near Bristol, on August 6, 2024 – an incident that was claimed by Palestine Action.

The direct action group’s stated objective is to counter Israeli war crimes – and what it says is British complicity in them – by targeting weapons manufacturers and associated companies. Its main target is Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest weapons manufacturer, which has several UK sites.

“The officers arresting Qesser at home [on Monday] covered their faces to avoid accountability in the same way ICE agents have been seen doing in violent raids in the US,” said campaigners supporting the Filton 24.

After the charge of aggravated burglary was dropped against all of the group, 23 of them were released on bail last month. Days earlier, the High Court had ruled that the UK’s ban on Palestine Action as a “terror” group was unlawful.

But the ban remains in place, as the home secretary will challenge the High Court ruling in late April.

Zuhrah was released in February after spending 15 months on remand without a conviction.

She had joined a rolling hunger strike while in prison in protest against the UK’s ban on Palestine Action in mid-2025, a measure that put it on par with groups like ISIL (ISIS) and al-Qaeda, and against prison conditions she described last week as inhumane.

She said she was subjected to solitary confinement, assaulted and taunted by guards while on hunger strike.

Zuhrah refused food for almost 50 days, pushing her body to the limits.

“On the 45th or 46th day, they left me paralysed with muscle wastage on my cell floor for 22 hours,” she alleged. “They left me to die on my cell floor, or at least let me believe that they would [leave me].”

A government spokesperson denied allegations of prison mistreatment, saying in a statement, “All individuals were managed in line with longstanding policy while in prison. 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 were taken to hospital.”

The Palestine Action-linked defendants said last week that they plan to sue the prisons.

Naila Ahmed at the advocacy group CAGE said Monday’s arrest “is merely a continuation of the active repression targeting pro-Palestine activists in the UK”.

She told Al Jazeera, “The use of terrorism legislation to police social media posts relating to activism, represents the overreach of these powers, raising urgent concerns about freedom of expression and the criminalisation of political dissent.”