Lawyer Challenges Detention & Phone seizure Following Representation of hamas
Fahad Ansari, a lawyer, is taking legal action against the Home Secretary and the chief constable of North Wales Police, alleging unlawful detention and the improper seizure of his work mobile phone. The legal proceedings, filed wednesday, stem from an incident on August 6th at the port of Holyhead, where Ansari was stopped upon returning from a family holiday in Ireland with his wife and four children.
Ansari is challenging the legality of his detention,questioning,and the subsequent seizure and attempted examination of his phone. His claim, prepared by Jude Bunting KC of doughty Street Chambers, argues that utilizing Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act – which permits stops, questions, searches, and detentions at ports – is unjustified when applied to a lawyer solely based on their past or present representation of clients of interest to law enforcement or intelligence agencies, or to obtain data about those clients.
The questioning, Ansari states, largely focused on Palestine Action, a group recently proscribed under the Terrorism Act. He was also questioned about Hamas, but invoked client confidentiality and declined to answer. The day following his detention, police copied the contents of his phone.
Ansari, currently a consultant at Duncan Lewis solicitors, previously served as director and principal solicitor at Riverway law, the firm that provided pro bono legal representation to Hamas in their application to be removed from the UK government’s list of banned terrorist groups – a move undertaken to comply with sanctions regulations. Following the submission of this application, both Shadow Home Secretary Robert Jenrick and the Campaign Against Antisemitism filed complaints against Ansari with the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA).
Ansari expressed concern over the extent of the targeting, stating he’s never encountered such scrutiny of a lawyer based on their clientele in his decade of experience with national security cases. He argued that such actions undermine the integrity of the legal profession by discouraging representation of “unpopular clients” due to fear of intimidation.
During the interview,Ansari recounts an officer commenting that the ban on Palestine Action was “ludicrous,” and being asked about his educational background and social life.
Ansari is seeking an urgent interim injunction to prevent police from examining, sifting, or sharing the copied data from his phone, asserting that its contents are “overwhelmingly covered by legal privilege.” He was held for three hours, during which he was fingerprinted, photographed, had his DNA swabbed, and was compelled to remove security measures from his phone under threat of arrest.
Should his claim succeed, Ansari intends to pursue damages for trespass to property, trespass to person, and false imprisonment.
The Home Office and police have not yet issued a comment. However, sources indicate the police have stated they will defer review of the phone’s contents until after consultation with independent counsel.
