Shahmina Alam spends her days glued to her phone.
Along with her parents, she’s waiting for news of her brother Kamran Ahmed, a Palestine Action-linked prisoner hospitalised for a second time on Monday due to his hunger strike.
“The fact that I don’t have my phone right next to me in this interview is making me feel anxious,” Alam told Middle East Eye.
“We don’t know how he’s doing, that’s the honest answer,” she said of her brother, who is being held at Pentonville prison in London.
The prison, she said, has blocked the hospital from directly providing medical updates to her brother’s family and solicitor, instructing them to go through the hospital’s legal team instead.
The family experienced a similar communications blackout when Ahmed was first hospitalised on 25 November, despite multiple calls and emails from Alam and her husband requesting information.
“Like last time, we’ve been cut from communication with him and we’re unable to get updates,” she said.
The silence is unbearable for the sister and her elderly parents, who are now wholly dependent on her for support in her brother’s absence.
It bears repeating because articles seem to gloss over it, if not miss it out entirely: he has not been convicted of anything. He has only been charged and is being held without trial. Same with the rest of them.
Yep, they are being held and tortured as political prisoners for protesting genocide.
