Anarchists Detained by Counter-Terrorist Police on Return from Swiss Conference [plus French, Spanish translations]
For the past week, thousands of anarchists from across Europe have
been converging in St.Imier, Switzerland to celebrate the 140th
anniversary of the founding of the Anarchist international. The
gathering took the form of a festival and educational, with music, films and entertainment as well as workshops and discussions.
On returning from the St Imier gathering, two anarchists, one a
member of the UK Anarchist Federation, were detained for nearly two
hours at Heathrow by SO15 (counter-terrorist) police. During the
detention, the anarchists were told that their normal rights did not
apply, and had their names, addresses, email addresses, DNA and
fingerprints taken. The detained anarchists were also forced to sign
forms – which may or may not be legal – waiving their rights to silence
and a solicitor. Police also conducted a thorough search of personal
possessions, photocopied literature and passports and took information
from phones and cameras.
During the detention, the police constantly accused the anarchists of
lying about involvement in criminal activity and alleged that they
would be conducting follow-up police action against one of the detained
anarchists. In addition to this, SO15 officers asked a number of
inflammatory, irrelevant and offensive questions, including ‘what would
you do if someone raped your mother?’ evidently in an attempt to cause
emotional upset and illicit angry or violent responses. One member (28)
who did not want to be named for fear of reprisals from the police, said
"We were treated like criminals. I told them I went to the congress as I
am an amateur journalist and I write articles about activism. They saw
my note book, camera and Dictaphone but they said I was lying. One
officer said 'You said you are an anarchist, I've seen anarchists on the
news, they are violent, throw molotov cocktails and disrupt people’s
lives not write articles'".
ann arky's home.
