Human rights case that a UK church took up
The young Palestinian woman, Layan Nasir, whom Israeli security forces arrested at her Ramallah area home in a dawn raid last July, has been remanded on bail by an Israeli military court until November 9 on charges of belonging to an unlawful association. Layan, who is 21, is a student at Bir Zeit University, near Ramallah, and had spent more than seven weeks in an Israeli military prison after her arrest. She appeared in the security court on October 5.
The case has drawn the attention of the parishioners of the church of St. Philip and St. James in Leckhampton, Cheltenham, in Gloucestershire, who are linked to the Anglican Community in the Ramallah area, where Layan attends St. Peter’s Church in Bir Zeit. The English parishioners requested their local MP, Alex Chalk, to ask the Foreign Officed Minister responsible for the region, James Cleverly, to have the British Ambassador in Tel Aviv take the case up with the Israel authorities.
The Bishops of the Church in Wales wrote to the Israel Embassy in London expressing their concern at the treatment of Layan, and made contact with Layan’s parents.
The British Government made no intervention with the Israelis in Layan case, but this could be because she is not a British subject.
There follows here a record of the sequence of events from the breaking of the original story in August, by Mondoweiss, illustrating the day-to-day hazards every Palestinian, of whatever age, gender or type, faces under Israeli occupation.
Click here for the original Mondoweiss article.
Click here to download the St. Philip and St. James’s parishioners’ letter to their local MP, asking him to have the Foreign Office Minister, Mr Cleverly, via the British Ambassador intercede with the Israeli authorities, and write to the Israeli Embassy in London. There is no evidence in the letter that he did either.
Click here to read the Foreign Office Minister’s reply to the parishioners’ MP.