AIRPORT
police last Tuesday defended their action under anti-terror laws to arrest and
detain under David Miranda, the partner of a Guardian journalist, Glenn
Greenwald, involved in reporting the leaked material supplied by Edwin Snowden.
Miranda,
a Brazilian national, was held at Heathrow on his way from Berlin to Rio de
Janeiro for nine hours without charge. He reportedly had his mobile phone,
laptop, memory sticks, DVDs and other items seized before he was released.
The
government of Brazil expressed “grave concern” at Miranda’s detention and said
it was “unjustified”.
Speculation
is high that this was an indirect act of revenge against Greenwald for his role
in the leaking of Snowden’s tapes, which revealed the vast extent of the US
National Security Agency eavesdropping on electronic mail of US citizens and
the citizens of other western countries.
Labour
MP Keith Vaz called for the full facts of David Miranda's nine-hour detention
at Heathrow to be established quickly.
The
Home Office said it was for the police to decide when to use the powers it has
to stop people.
The
Independent Reviewer of Terrorism legislation, David Anderson QC, said it was
very unusual for a passenger to be held for nine hours under schedule Seven of
the Terrorism Act 2000 and he wanted to "get to the bottom" of what
had happened.
The
Guardian said: "We were dismayed that the partner of a Guardian journalist
who has been writing about the security services was detained for nearly nine
hours while passing through Heathrow airport.
"We
are urgently seeking clarification from the British authorities."
Greenwald
said the British authorities' actions in holding Miranda amounted to
"intimidation and bullying" and linked it to his writing about Edward
Snowden's revelations concerning the US NSA.
"They
never asked him about a single question at all about terrorism or anything
relating to a terrorist organisation," he told the BBC World Service's
Newsday programme.
"They
spent the entire day asking about the reporting I was doing and other Guardian
journalists were doing on the NSA stories.
"The
principal point, since they kept him for the full nine hours, is to try to send
a message of intimidation and bullying.”
The
civil rights movement, Liberty, has long argued that Schedule Seven is overbroad
legislation, ripe for misuse and discrimination, and currently has a case
pending at the European Court of Human Rights challenging the power.
Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, said:
"David Miranda's chilling nine-hour detention was possible due to the
breathtakingly broad Schedule Seven power, which requires no suspicion and is
routinely abused.
“People
are held for long periods, subject to strip searches, saliva swabbing and
confiscation of property – all without access to a publicly funded lawyer.
“Liberty
is already challenging this law in the Court of Human Rights but MPs disturbed
by this latest scandal should repeal it without delay.”
Meanwhile
the editor of the Guardian, Alan Rusbridger, has reported that intelligence
officials from the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) ordered the
paper to destroy computer hard drives in effort to stop Snowden revelations.
The action is unlikely to prevent new materials coming out.
Rusbridger
said on the Guardian’s website that the officials told him that he would either
have to hand over all the classified documents or have the newspaper’s hard
drives destroyed.
He
wrote that the officials then watched as computers, which contained classified
information passed on by Snowden, were physically destroyed in one of the
newspaper building’s basements.
During
negotiations with the Government, Rusbridger said that the newspaper could not
fulfil its journalistic duty if it satisfied the authorities’ requests.
But
GCHQ reportedly responded by telling the Guardian that it had already sparked
the debate, which was enough. "You've had your debate. There's no need to
write any more," Reuters quoted the unnamed official as saying.
No comments:
Post a Comment