A judge in a London court on Monday found activist Muhammad Rabbani guilty of a terrorism offense because he refused to turn over his passwords to police during a border search.
Rabbani, the 36-year-old international director of British advocacy group Cage, was arrested in November at London’s Heathrow Airport. Police had demanded he provide his phone and laptop passwords during an “examination” that was carried out under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act, a broad power authorities can use to interrogate and detain people in border areas without requiring any suspicion of wrongdoing.
Rabbani said he could not provide access to his devices because they contained confidential information, provided to him by one of Cage’s clients, about alleged acts of U.S. torture. The group, which was founded in 2003 to raise awareness about the plight of prisoners held at Guantánamo Bay, was planning to use the information in a pending lawsuit against the U.S. government.
At the end of a quick one-day trial, Judge Emma Arbuthnot at Westminster Magistrates Court ruled that Rabbani had willfully obstructed police when he declined to hand over his passwords. Rabbani avoided a possible three-month jail term and was instead handed a 12-month conditional discharge and told he must pay court costs of £620 ($835). This means a Terrorism Act offense will be recorded on his criminal record. But as long as he does not re-offend within the 12-month period, no further action will be taken against him.
Rabbani said in a statement after the verdict that the judgment highlighted the “absurdity of the Schedule 7 law” and called for it to be reformed. “If privacy and confidentiality are crimes, then the law stands condemned,” he said. “They accept that at no point was I under suspicion, and that ultimately this was a matter of having been profiled at a port. … Schedule 7 actively discriminates, and this will hopefully be the start of a number of legal challenges as more people take courage to come forward.”
During the trial, Rabbani’s lawyer, Henry Blaxland, questioned three police officers who were responsible for carrying out the search at the airport. The most senior officer acknowledged that Rabbani had not been randomly stopped and was instead deliberately targeted for reasons that were not disclosed. Prior to the trial, Rabbani had told The Intercept he believed the authorities may have wanted to obtain a copy of the information about the alleged torture, which was provided to him by a contact in the Middle East. He had been searched on several prior occasions, he said, but never before had police seemed so determined to gain access to his electronic devices.
Schedule 7 is supposed to be used solely to determine whether a person is directly involved in the “commission, preparation, or instigation of acts of terrorism.” In 2013, however, the power was used to detain David Miranda, the partner of Intercept co-founding editor Glenn Greenwald, in an effort to impede reporting on documents leaked by National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden. Miranda’s detention caused controversy in the U.K., and aspects of Schedule 7 were subsequently changed. Police were issued with a revised code of practice that told them they must not review or copy information that they have grounds to believe is attorney-client privileged, journalistic material, or another kind of information held in confidence, which a person has “acquired or created in the course of any trade, business, profession, or other occupation.”
Rabbani had argued his electronic devices should have been protected under the latter category, as they contained confidential information related to his work. The judge said that Rabbani did not make this clear to the officers who initially interrogated him, but did say so later in a prepared statement following his arrest. She described Rabbani as “of good character,” acknowledged he was “trying to protect confidential material on his devices,” and noted that “the importance of passwords and PIN numbers in the 21st century cannot be overstated.” However, she still concluded that his “decision not to provide the information when requested by the examining officers” amounted to “a wilful obstruction of the lawful examination in the circumstances.”
Dean Haydon, head of the Counter Terrorism Command at London’s Metropolitan Police, said the outcome was an “important one” for the authorities. “It’s crucial that police are able to use the legislation that exists to help keep the public safe,” he said in a statement. “Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000 is a vital tool in the fight against terrorism and we are committed to ensuring the power is used appropriately and proportionately, as it was in this case. The Met has retained Rabbani’s phone and laptop and is continuing its efforts to examine the contents.”
A spokesperson for Cage said the group was considering whether it would appeal the verdict.
Top photo: The international director of Cage, Muhammad Rabbani, left, arrives at Westminster Magistrates’ Court in London on Sept. 25, 2017, for his trial, after being accused of refusing to reveal his phone and computer passwords at Heathrow Airport last year.
Just one Government obstructing justice for another Government so they can exchange favors back & fourth many times over ! Just more proof of fascist abuse of power ! !
I think the whole thing started when the Anti Defamation League wasn’t prosecuted in a criminal court for spying on activists in 1993.
But I could be proven wrong-especially if those bastards sue me for defamation, or spy me into the ground.
The entire western system of justice adopted the ADL “spying on activists model” of policing-and then went that one step further by PROSECUTING dissenters?
The ADL: Covert action, censure and courting law-enforcement
http://israellobbyus.org/transcripts/1.3Jeffrey_BlankfortT.htm
There you go-this is what ‘making a world of deference’ is-to world citizens with dual citizenship.(they can always just get the hell out of here when the sh!t they stir up kicks off-just like last time)
Yeah- I blame the ADL.
“The Met has retained Rabbani’s phone and laptop and is continuing its efforts to examine the contents.”
WTF?!
So, they agree he wasn’t engaged in any kind of terrorist activity, but they’re demanding to see the contents anyway?!
Sorry, Britain, that’s seriously fucked up; yall have been listening to the USA a bit too much! It’s just a bit too obvious that yall are doing this at the behest of the US government – they want to prevent / inhibit justice, that’s their motive!
It should be a simple matter for techies to come up with a program that recognizes two passwords. The first password is the one you normally use.
The second password you hand over to agents forcing you to surrender your privacy. That password will only be used once because it triggers a swift, quiet and permanent erasure of all data before it can be displayed.
Try not to get these two passwords mixed up.
Suicide passwords are probably on standby on spy planes now skirting the shores of North Korea.
For an additional fee, techies might arrange that, should anyone start unscrewing screws and messing with your hard drive without permission––or whatever hacks do to get around passwords, then said data will similarly be destroyed.
Be sure to buy your computer from a firm that does not load it with a program negating a suicide command.
One more bit of advice, given Schedule 7 and its recent interpretation by even-handed judges: never back up your data.
Are you serious?
You are recommending that journalists and others just destroy their data? Your comment reeks of “Fabian” time theft, of the type practiced by the ADL and other similarly situated deep pockets millionaire clubs, situational racists and defamation specialists.
A better solution would be a hard drive that registers as a complete hard drive, is filled with gibberish (like Constitutional clauses about privacy, and due process reminders), loaded with spyware and malware that will infect government systems, and that masks the actual key to an offline hard drive which is encrypted, and stored in a safe space for ‘journalists/activists only’ offline area- perhaps on a satellite the way that Pirate Bay did for downloads.
This way, the ADL would have to work with the Mossad, and the FBI first to label activists and journalists privacy rights “a threat to the ADL’s ability to defame people and covertly harass them” and THEN the appropriate spy agencies can take action on BEHALF of these genocidal, zionist, racist scumbags, so that Hitler’s deal with zionists can be vindicated.
The ADL: Covert action, censure and courting law-enforcement
http://israellobbyus.org/transcripts/1.3Jeffrey_BlankfortT.htm
uestion: “What was the purpose of keeping all those
names, Cal?
Answer: “What was the purpose? I was an investigator for
the ADL. I investigated any and all anti-democratic
movements.
Question: “And these investigations that you were doing,
were they all in behalf of the ADL?
Answer: “They were all in behalf of the ADL.”
Not My Europe.
you are right!
Luckily, the Brits voted to exit Europe and go back to their Master as the true US-lackeys they are.
I just want to thank everyone at The Intercept for blocking and deleting my comments, especially given that they completely are within the Comment Policy guidelines.
They post this but delete my comment on the article. Nice.
Reread the comment policy. Comments on the article are prohibited in order to avoid a narrow discussion that is focused on the article.
lol
As part of FISA’s killing-machine against political dissidents, twice in six months the New York City Police Department (NYPD), without warrants, raided my apartment at gun-point after breaking its door.
They left a confession in the form of a hand-written note with the word “intel”, and the name of a high-official of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security as the person who ordered the raids.
Who are the terrorists ?
Wilfredo-
You make this claim repeatedly-
Would you care t provide links to documentation of your situation? You might have grounds for a civil lawsuit.
The judge praising Rabbani as she takes away his right to future travel is quintessentially British. They really know how to rub it in.
Your rights are very important to us, which is why it pains us so to take them away. Of course they’re being hypocrites, but they are very pleasant about it all. Authoritarianism with a smiling face. The United States could learn a lesson from Great Britain.
This Schedule 7 law is disingenuous, i.e. the law is ostensibly intended to protect the public from terrorist attacks; but the UK police obviously did not stop this guy for that reason. Rather they wanted the Cage client info on his phone and laptop as described. The police and the judge abused the law in this instance. Like the infamous Patriot Act, this Schedule 7 law is intended to give broad, abusive powers to the government at the expense of citizens. Bush’s “War on Terror” is actually a war on civil rights as this case so clearly reveals. Indeed, 9-11 changed everything, and for the very worst. You can thank Bush and Cheney for that.
I’m guessing this is the comment you thought they censored. -shrug- They just have some kind of algorithm that slows down posting sometimes – who knows what triggers it, but most likely some comments go to a human for review first. The delays in posting are weird here sometimes, but I don’t think it’s nefarious.
I’m not sure about British law, but maybe he could have used a self-incrimination defense if his password was a horrid slur against the queen.
…Doesn’t even have to be the real thing… Just imagine them at the port of entry and our hapless citizen tells the officer:
“It’s ‘TheQueenIsASlut’ … no, no! No, that’s not it, that was last week. Um, I think it’s ‘TheQueenGivesFreeBlojobs’? Yes?! No? … Um, OK, well try ‘ElizabethLikesItInHer…’ . . . . ”
Imagine the hilarity!
“The most senior officer acknowledged that Rabbani had not been randomly stopped and was instead deliberately targeted for reasons that were not disclosed.”
So we can infer intelligence services tipped off airport security to hold this guy. We have this in the US, as well, except out police have to hide the fact that they were tipped off due to our 4th amendment. Its called parallel reconstruction, and Reuters did a fantastic article on it years ago: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-dea-sod/exclusive-u-s-directs-agents-to-cover-up-program-used-to-investigate-americans-idUSBRE97409R20130805
If they still have his devices, chances are they already hacked them at the hardware level, and are just being difficult at this point.
Unless it’s encrypted…
The judge agrees he should have the right to keep his information confidential, yet the police are keeping his laptop and phone in order to gain the confidential information.
At least the bastards didn’t lock him up.
No wonder the terrorism label is so critical to lawmakers/law.
It is their right to know E V E R Y thing and punish beyond realism.
I am still waiting for the US to make a law that clearly states embarrassment cannot be used as the reason to accuse, indict, or prosecute whistleblowers.
This is a law that Jeremy Corbyn voted against. That he did so was used against him by the yellow media (BBC SUN Times etc) who claimed that it proved that he was ‘soft on terrorism’ .
It is very much to be hoped that once Labour has won the next election it will repeal this law. In the meantime any Labour MPs wishing to keep this law- passed with their support- should be de-selected by their constituencies.
You assume that the British public would have any empathy for a terrorist-lookalike. We have to wait for a more sympathetic victim comes forward.
Would Yusuf Islam do?
The police claim that Rabbani did not inform them at the time that his devices contained information protected under Schedule 7.
That would excuse their continuing to try to access his data — at the time.
Now they know the data is protected. What is their excuse?
So, he was targeted for reasons that are secret. A Terrorism Act offense will be recorded on his criminal record, which means he can not travel to many countries any more for his work. In case he had told the officers that the information was related to work he wouldn’t have been convicted?
This is supposed to keep us safe.
It seems very important to appeal this verdict.
If criminal case is over, why do police still have his possessions? Also, if he is, as the judge says, “of good character”, why would the courts not give a lighter (non-terrorism related) charge in its place? This seems to wrong on so many levels but these two things came to mind first. It seems that things included in this law have not changed to really help people in this situation, since the injustices done to Mr Miranda. Sad.
When people in authority abuse their power, I’m a great believer in the “heads on pikes and ask questions later” option. I call it the “stand your ground by erecting your favorite totem” law.