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Palestine protests: Counter-terror police grill teenager about going on marches [1]

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Date: 2024-02 

Counter-terror police stopped a teenage boy wearing a Palestine flag at a UK airport and demanded: “Have you been to any of the protests?”

The bizarre 40-minute ordeal – a recording of which has been exclusively obtained by openDemocracy – saw an officer repeatedly ask the boy and a family member about their views on the “situation in Palestine”, how often they had been on marches in London, and whether they had seen any disorder there.

The pair were handed a leaflet and told that they were legally required to answer any questions under schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000.

They were stopped while travelling abroad to visit family and asked about their plans as well as their opinions about the conflict in the Middle East.

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Labour MP John McDonnell said the police’s questioning was verging on “entrapment”.

Jun Pang, policy and campaigns officer at Liberty, said the rights group was “extremely concerned by reports that police are treating support for Palestine as evidence in terror investigations”.

“The state should not be targeting us for merely exercising our rights to go on demonstrations and marches,” she added.

Last week, judges at the International Court of Justice in The Hague heard arguments that Israel’s destruction of Gaza in the wake of the 7 October Hamas attacks constitutes genocide. According to the Palestinian authorities, at least 24,000 people have been killed there by Israeli forces in three months, while key infrastructure including healthcare has all but collapsed.

The regular marches taking place in London to express solidarity with Palestine and call for a ceasefire in Gaza are legal, and have attracted an estimated cumulative attendance of millions over the past few months.

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[1] Url: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/counter-terror-police-palestine-protests-israel-gaza-airport-recording/

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