Campaign Against the Arms Trade (CAAT) media coordinator — and former Canary journalist — Emily Apple was stopped on the street by the Metropolitan Police in Whitehall last week, then arrested for breaching conditions imposed on a protest under Section 14 of the Public Order Act and detained for ten hours. Apple wasn’t part of any protest.

The Met officer harassing Apple claimed he was doing so because he believed she was planning to attend a protest – and arrested her because she asked him to explain his basis for that belief and why he was stopping her while allowing dozens of others to walk unmolested along the same street in the same direction:

The officer claimed he came to his conclusion because of a sticker on Apple’s phone — which he couldn’t see at the time he decided to stop her. Speaking out about the incident, Apple, who is Jewish, was clear that she was the victim of profiling because she was wearing a Palestinian scarf:

I know why I was stopped. It’s because I was wearing a kufiya. I wasn’t protesting. I was wearing headphones, and just walking. But I was deliberately targeted. Other people walking through were ignored.

I wanted to know why I’d been stopped. I wanted to know on what grounds the cop who stopped me believed he had reasonable suspicion that I was going to attend a protest. I wanted to know how it was even lawful for the police to stop and threaten me with arrest because I might protest.

I just wanted an answer to a very simple question. I just wanted him to admit that I was stopped because of the scarf I was wearing. But he refused to admit it. Instead I was arrested, handcuffed behind my back for over three hours, and detained for ten hours in total. I was charged with the offence, and am in court on 24th November, and I have nerve damage from the cuffs. Not because of any action I had taken. But because I might protest. I committed the “crime” of wearing a kufiya and refusing to just accept what the police told me without an explanation of why it was lawful.

“But this is the dystopian, authoritarian country we now live in – one where you can end up sitting in a cell because the police believe you might protest.

Under the regime of ‘long-time servant of the security state‘ Keir Starmer, who is determined to protect Israel by suppressing the UK’s anti-genocide movement, even Jewish campaigners are being targeted. Britain has become a police state and not even an honest one.

By Skwawkbox

This post was originally published on Canary.