Meet Palestinian Soccer Star Mahmoud Sarsak at the Crossroads Women's Centre - later today

2-4pm Sunday, 26 May 2013 Crossroads Women’s Centre 25 Wolsey Mews, London NW5 2DX
We have just been given the precious opportunity to have the first UK public meetingwith Mahmoud Sarsak, Palestinian hunger-striker and footballer. In 2009 Mahmoud, then age 22, was arrested and detained in Israel without charge or trial.  In 2012, after three years of torture and indefinite incarceration, he went on a heroic three-month hunger strike.  Israel denied him proper medical treatment and offered him release only if he agreed to exile, but he refused.
Mahmoud was part of a mass prisoners’ hunger strike (over 2,000 Palestinians), which forced Israel to promise an end to solitary confinement, the right to family visits from Gaza and that administrative detention would not be renewed without evidence brought before a court.   Mahmoud continued even after the mass hunger strike ended as he was the only prisoner held under "Combatant Law" – even more notorious than administrative detention.  He was supported internationally, including by Eric Cantona and other footballers, and by Ken Loach, Noam Chomsky and many others.  He ended his hunger strike only when he won his right to stay in Palestine. Yesterday, as part of the Red Card Israeli Racism protest (also known as Red Card Israeli Apartheid), Mahmoud and Alexei Sayle handed a letter to Michel Platini, president of the Union of European Football Associations, urging him to cancel the planned under-21 European football tournament in Israel. Islington Friends of Yibna,  Payday men’s network and the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network For more information:  07816 251 377 or 07880 731 865