A PALESTINE prisoners’ movement has called for the release of activists arrested for protesting against Israeli weapons factories in Britain.

Six activists from Palestine Action (PA) are currently detained and over 100 more are facing custodial sentences for disrupting the manufacturing of the weapons.

Elbit Systems supplies 85 per cent of Israel’s military drone fleet and land-based equipment — which have been recently used in the brutal attacks in Jenin and Gaza.

In a statement, the Palestinian Prisoners’ Movement said: “We condemn the British authorities’ arrest of members of the PA movement and call on all international legal and human rights organisations to take … official and popular action to pressure the British government to immediately release the remaining activists …”

The statement also called for authorities to “bring an end to the British complicity with the zionist apartheid regime, from the issuing of the Balfour Declaration in 1917 until the present day.”

Some 80 celebrities, activists, academics and lawyers also issued a statement of solidarity this week, calling for the charges against those already imprisoned or facing jail time over the actions to be dropped.

Signatories included Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters, rapper Lowkey, Palestinian writer and activist Mohammed el-Kurd and South African MP and Nelson Mandela’s grandson, Chief Nkosi Zwelivelile Mandela.

PA has called for a day of action on Saturday July 22 to support prisoners in Britain, as well as some 5,000 Palestinian political prisoners jailed, and to the campaign to shut down Elbit operations in Britain.

It said in a statement: “Just as the arms industry of occupation is directly tied to the British weapons industry and colonialism in Palestine, the imprisonment of PA activists is part of the same framework of colonial repression.”