Campaign to Free Thousands of Palestinian Prisoners Gains Ground Across Europe A growing campaign across Europe is putting the spotlight on the more than 9,100 Palestinians currently held in Israeli prisons, with activists now referring to them as “Palestinian hostages” to highlight the scale of detention without charge or trial. On Saturday, thousands of people marched through central London wearing red ribbons and carrying banners calling for the immediate release of everyone from children to elderly detainees, including over 450 women and minors. Similar large demonstrations took place in Paris and Athens to mark the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, while protesters gathered outside the Israeli embassy in Copenhagen on Friday under the slogan “Bring Them Home.” A major focus of the protests has been Marwan Barghouti, the high-profile Fatah leader widely seen as a potential future Palestinian president. The 66-year-old has been imprisoned since 2002 on five life sentences related to the Second Intifada and has spent years in solitary confinement. Since October 2023, Palestinian officials say his conditions have deteriorated sharply, with almost no family or lawyer visits and allegations of physical abuse and deliberate humiliation. Human-rights groups say the treatment of Palestinian prisoners has worsened dramatically during the war in Gaza. Reports from inside Israeli detention facilities describe underground cells where inmates never see daylight, receive barely enough food to survive, and are completely cut off from the outside world. At least two Gaza civilians — a nurse taken while still wearing his medical scrubs and a teenage street vendor — have been held for months with no charges. According to Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, at least 94 Palestinian detainees have died in custody since the war began, with evidence pointing to torture, beatings, medical neglect, and severe malnutrition. One case involved 17-year-old Walid Ahmad, who died in Megiddo prison showing signs of prolonged starvation. A recent UN review concluded that Israel is operating what amounts to a systematic policy of torture and ill-treatment against Palestinian prisoners, a practice that has “gravely intensified” since 7 October 2023. Protesters in London also criticised the UK government for continuing to license arms sales to Israel and for prosecuting activists who campaign against those exports, while thousands of Palestinians remain behind bars under what demonstrators call an apartheid prison system.