Today’s Guardian has an interesting account by David Mery of the day he was arrested by the metropolitan police for acting suspiciously on the tube. This took place the day after the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes in Stockwell station. Mery has a web page where he is keeping a record of the incident and its aftermath. His flat was raided and some of his possessions were confiscated. Two months on he still hasn’t got them all back.
The police decided that wearing a rain jacket, carrying a rucksack with a laptop inside, looking down at the steps while going into a tube station and checking your phone for messages just ticked too many boxes on their checklist and makes you a terrorist suspect. How many other people are not only wrongly detained but wrongly arrested every week in similar circumstances? And how many of them are also computer and telecoms enthusiasts, fitting the police’s terrorist profile so well?
You might be interested in the audio interview on rampART radio in which David Mery talks about his experience and chats about the errosion of our civil liberties…You can download the MP3 from the rampART website or subscribe to the podcast.http://rampartradio.co.nr