Canadians: Send an urgent message to legislators urging them to stop Trudeau’s ‘Online Harms Act’
(LifeSiteNews) — An independent journalist in the United Kingdom has been arrested under terrorism laws upon his return to London.
Richard Medhurst, an “internationally accredited journalist” with strong views against Zionist actions in Israel, was arrested on Thursday, August 15, by six police officers in a move he described on his release as “political persecution.”
“I feel that this is a political persecution and hampers my ability to work as a journalist,” said Medhurst, in a statement released on X (formerly Twitter) on August 19. The reason supplied for his arrest was: “Expressing an opinion or belief that is supportive of a proscribed organization.”
Police refused to explain, Medhurst said, although he has been known, in reaction to ongoing IDF slaughtering of innocent Palestinians, to express support in his frequent commentaries for some of Hamas’ violent acts.
Stopped by police as he left the aircraft, Medhurst was taken into a room, searched, had his phone confiscated, and was not permitted to inform his family of his arrest. He spent almost 24 hours in detention in what he described as an attempt to intimidate him for the crime of – journalism.
I was arrested at Heathrow Airport under the Terrorism Act, Sec 12 because of my reporting.
6 police officers were waiting for me at the entrance of the aircraft.
I was held for almost 24 hours and questioned.
I believe I'm the first journalist to be arrested under this… pic.twitter.com/pbf6q5dXIf
— Richard Medhurst (@richimedhurst) August 19, 2024
Describing his journalism as a “public service” and a “counterweight to mainstream media,” Medhurst cited the many other cases of the British liberal-global state using the police to suppress criticism of its foreign and domestic policies.
“Those like myself who are speaking up and reporting on the situation in Palestine are being targeted,” he said.
U.K. Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has announced the redefinition of “terrorism” to include “anti-establishment rhetoric,” “anti-LGBTQI+ sentiment,” “anti-abortion activism,” and any speech online or offline which it deems to be “extreme” – as a report from LifeSiteNews below shows.
READ: UK’s draconian ‘online safety’ laws are turning traditional values into criminal ‘hate speech’
The new definition of terrorism now includes regime-critical journalism.
“Many people have been detained in Britain because of their connection to journalism,” explained Medhurst, naming “Julian Assange, [former diplomat] Craig Murray, [GrayZone journalist] Kit Klarenberg, David Miranda, Vanessa Beeley,” who have all been imprisoned, harassed, and detained by U.K. police for their journalism.
Medhurst pointed out that he is the first journalist in the U.K. to be arrested and held under section 12 of the Terrorism Act 2000.
Medhurst says U.K. terror laws are “out of control” and have “no place in a democracy,” as they are used to “muzzle” reporting on issues such as the “humanitarian crisis in Gaza.”
He argues that “counter terrorism laws should be used to fight actual terrorism” – and not to have “journalists dragged off planes and treated like murderers.”
Medhurst’s argument is an embarrassment for a state which has created the conditions of terrorism abroad and at home, whilst seeming reluctant to stop “actual terrorists” themselves.
The Manchester Arena bombing in 2017 was carried out by a Libyan whose family had left Libya in 1994. He was radicalized alongside the British-backed war launched in 2011 to topple Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.
Salman Abedi was known to the authorities and they did nothing to stop him. He traveled with his father to fight with Islamist militants against the Libyan government forces the U.K. had helped to destroy. His brother Hashem traveled to Libya to join ISIS and helped to organize the bombing.
Schoolmates and a youth worker had warned authorities Abedi was openly announcing his intention to pursue violent jihad in Manchester. When he did so, he killed 22 men, women, and children, leaving hundreds more with life changing injuries.
In April of this year, over 250 injured survivors began suing MI5, the British state security service, for failing to act on this information and permitting the attack to take place.
In almost every case, violent terrorists are previously known to police and intelligence services in the U.K. In most cases, these terrorists seek to replicate the atrocities committed by Islamist militias who have entered the power vacuum created by U.K. government-backed wars in Iraq, Syria, Libya.
They are radicalized in our homelands by the violence the liberal-global state has unleashed abroad. Yet we are told, in every case, that online censorship must follow every preventable attack. This is absurd, as British writer Douglas Murray has pointed out:
It is this liberal-global state which has smashed nations abroad, driving mass migration into the West. Why do these attacks keep happening? Why does the state not prevent them when the attackers are almost always known to them beforehand?
Instead of preventing terrorism as is their duty, state authorities use anti-terror laws to prevent people like Medhurst – and Kit Klarenberg – from informing the public of the cause of this permanent state of emergency which has replaced our normal lives.
In May 2023 British journalist Kit Klarenberg was “detained and interrogated” by six plainclothes police on his return to the U.K.
Klarenberg was questioned on “his personal opinion on everything from the current British political leadership to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine,” as The Grayzone reported last May.
His interrogation was seen as “retaliation” by the British state for his “blockbuster reports exposing major British and US intelligence intrigues.” Klarenberg has documented the illegal process of the election of Boris Johnson as Conservative leader and exposed U.K. involvement in Ukrainian acts of sabotage such as the Kerch Bridge. He was accused, of course, of being a Russian agent during his detention.
Klarenberg, an “anti-establishment” independent reporter, saw his targeting as part of a wider campaign by British security services to shut down The Grayzone. Klarenberg’s reporting has disturbed what retired British diplomat Alastair Crooke has termed “the deep structure of the deep state”, showing how laws are used to protect the exercise of permanent policies untouched by elections and undertaken with complete disregard for public opinion.
As The Grayzone report said: “Among Klarenberg’s most consequential exposés was his June 2022 report unmasking British journalist Paul Mason as a U.K. security state collaborator hellbent on destroying The Grayzone and other media outlets, academics, and activists critical of NATO’s role in Ukraine.”
The Grayzone, whose mission statement is to provide “independent news and investigative journalism on empire,” was founded by Max Blumenthal. It was one of many “media outlets, academics, and activists critical of NATO’s role in Ukraine.”
This is absolutely outrageous censorship of my friends and colleagues and particularly sinister given I and @TheGrayzoneNews received formal cease and desist orders from @Shoosmiths last week acting on behalf of Emma Briant. https://t.co/BDgYGSEJur pic.twitter.com/GTttZXbDLN
— Kit Klarenberg 🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻 (@KitKlarenberg) June 13, 2022
Following the angry protests over the murder of three small girls by a man of Rwandan origin in Southport, “keyboard rioter” Wayne O’Rourke has been jailed for over three years on charges including “anti-establishment rhetoric.” The protests, fueled by decades of ongoing organized child rape gangs, terror bombings, and murders by immigrant populations, were described by one former police chief as “terrorism.” Others have been imprisoned for protesting in person under terrorism charges.
In the U.K., the broad sweep of “terrorism” laws now provide for the arrest, detention and imprisonment of anyone in open disagreement with the liberal-global ideology. If you oppose abortion, permanent war, genocide in Gaza, if you notice these policies have replaced peace with routine atrocities and a police state at home – you are a terrorist.
The liberal-globalist state which has exported terror abroad and imported it at home will do nothing to prevent it taking place, because this chaos is the result of three decades of the bid for worldwide dominance of the liberal-global empire. The liberal-globalist government is not going to save you from the problems it has caused.
The liberal-global state will never protect you from the consequences of its actions. Its actions will prevent you from talking about them. It will protect others from finding out the truth about its crimes, which are so enormous they do not even have a name.
Like the former dictator of Uganda Idi Amin, the liberal global state in Britain now says “there may be freedom of speech – but I cannot guarantee freedom after speech.”
Medhurst was handcuffed tightly and locked in a “mobile cage” within a police vehicle, driven to the station and searched again.
After the confiscation of all his electronic equipment, he was “placed in solitary confinement in a cold cell that smelt like urine.”
Medhurst was informed he had the right to make a phone call and to know why he was being locked up. Both rights were “waived,” “given the nature of the offense,” as Medhurst says he was told by police. He was not permitted to make a phone call and the reason for his imprisonment was not explained.
“For many hours, no one knew where I was.” Medhurst spent almost 24 hours in captivity, waiting 15 hours to be interviewed – a delay he says was intended to “rattle him.” He says this failed.
He also strongly rejects the charge he is a “terrorist” – saying his work is dedicated to a diplomatic tradition of peace he inherited from his own family.
“Both my parents won Nobel Peace Prizes for their work as U.N. peacekeepers,” said Medhurst, before noting he has himself been a victim of terror.
“When I was at the international school in Islamabad, the Egyptian embassy adjacent to my school was blown up in a double bombing.”
“I categorically and unequivocally condemn terrorism,” said Medhurst.
Canadians: Send an urgent message to legislators urging them to stop Trudeau’s ‘Online Harms Act’