ANGLICANS in Palestine have pledged to “rally round” Layan Nasir, after she was sentenced, in absentia, to a further stretch of incarceration, after spending eight months in detention last year.
Earlier this month, the 25-year-old member of the Anglican congregation in Birzeit, in the occupied West Bank, was sentenced to seven-and-a-half months in detention.
Last year, Ms Nasir spent eight months in “administrative detention” — a mechanism that the Israeli authorities use in the occupied West Bank to incarcerate individuals indefinitely without charge or trial, as a purported security threat.
She was due to face a hearing on 7 September, but was informed that it had been postponed until November. It later emerged that, in her absence, the court had found her guilty and sentenced her to a further period of detention.
“We remain confused and distressed by a process which offers no visible sense of justice,” the Dean of St George’s College, the Very Revd Canon Richard Sewell, said this week. “While exploring all avenues to reverse this erroneous decision we will first and most of all support Layan and her family in their distress and through whatever occurs.”
He said that, for reasons that were unclear, it seemed that her sentence would not start until November.
Ms Nasir’s previous incarceration was criticised by Church of England bishops, including the Archbishop of Canterbury (News, 3 May 2024). In August, four bishops wrote a letter of support to Ms Nasir (News, 29 August).
Dean Sewell said that the “community of St Peter’s, Birzeit, and all the people of the diocese of Jerusalem will rally to support Layan and her family in the coming weeks”.
The the Archbishop in Jerusalem’s Chaplain, Canon Don Binder, told the Episcopal News Service that the conviction was for “routine activities” while Ms Nazir was a student at Birzeit University four years ago, and that it “lacks any legal or moral justification”.
