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Detained under Schedule 7, not once but twice
Matt Broomfield is a freelance journalist and a member of NUJ Cardiff Branch who was detained by police upon his arrival at Luton Airport at the end of the summer. Despite holding him under anti-terrorism laws, the security forces seemed more interested in challenging the quality of his reporting – despite it being published openly and without problem in major newspapers and other mainstream news outlets. What was going on?
Matt Broomfield: "They actually published online that they'd killed me in an air strike. Obviously they hadn't."
London Freelance Branch invited Matt to talk at LFB's October meeting about his experience and to share why he thinks he may have been targeted. He joined the meeting via Zoom from a work assignment in Belgrade.
"As a foreign correspondent, " Matt explained, "most of my work is focused on the Kurdish people and the Kurdish issue. I'm a Kurdish speaker and I lived for three years in Syrian Kurdistan, also known as Rojava, which is a region some of you may be familiar with if you've seen those images of Kurdish women fighting ISIS that were all over TV screens a few years ago. You may also remember in 2019 when Donald Trump decided to pull out the American troops that were in that region and allow for a Turkish invasion.
"I was there throughout that period at the end of the war with Isis. I was there on the ground, also, during the Turkish invasion, which cost a lot of lives and was a total catastrophe by all accounts."
During this period, Matt filed news reports for UK newspapers and UK magazines, while also running an NGO he set up, the Rojava Information Center, which works to connect the foreign press – such as big American publishers and TV stations, but also United Nations and Amnesty International – to people on the ground and to improve the quality of reporting and coverage.
"As people are aware, Turkey doesn't much care for the Kurds. It is extremely against any such project in Kurdish-led self determination, and the progressive focus on that region, the focus on human rights and focus on minority rights, is anathema to Turkey.
"Turkey is normally the very worst jailer of journalists in the world, or sometimes the second worst after China. About a third of all journalists who are jailed in the world are jailed in Turkey, almost all of them Kurdish, and journalists are also a regular military target for Turkey in Syrian Kurdistan and elsewhere. Just last month, Turkey launched an airstrike on a car carrying an all-female group of journalists working in that region.
"And, sadly, Turkey has a long arm in Europe. It has a very strong influence on security policy for European countries, particularly Germany and Britain, because these two countries have very strong ties. So Turkey is able to demand the extradition of Kurdish politicians, Kurdish activists and Kurdish journalists – and does so very often – back to its brutal jail system."
Matt noted how Turkey has been demanding that Sweden deport a number of Kurds living there in exile, as a condition for Turkey allowing Sweden to join NATO. He even remarked that Turkey has been known to conduct assassinations of Kurdish politicians and activists living in Europe.
It was perhaps inevitable that Turkey would take an interest in Matt's reporting. "They actually published online that they'd killed me in an air strike. Obviously they hadn't. But there are two things they have done. Firstly, they asked Germany to issue me with a ban from the Schengen zone. And so I'm no longer allowed to enter any of those countries on mainland Europe."
He found this out only when he went on holiday to Greece, only to be detained on arrival and put in a migrant detention centre for two months before being deported back to the UK. This led Matt to suspect a second round of Turkish interference, leading to his detention by British authorities, twice, under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000.
The notorious Schedule 7, unique to Britain, gives police the right to stop and detain you at a port of entry (port, airport or Eurotunnel terminus) for up to six hours without charge, even if they don't have reasonable suspicion that you've done anything wrong. They have the right to demand and receive all the passwords to your telephone and to your laptop. And you do not have the right to remain silent – a unique exemption in British law.
If you don't answer their questions or refuse to hand over your passwords, that becomes a criminal offence and you will go to jail.
"This has happened to me twice, " said Matt. "The last time was recently as I was travelling back to the UK to visit family. From the outset, the police obviously knew who I was. This wasn't random. They knew that I was a journalist.
"So pretty much the first thing they said was: 'OK, we know you're a journalist, so sorry to do this. Do you have any material on your phone that might be compromising to your sources, that might get them in trouble?' I said 'Well, obviously, I don't want you going through my phone' but knowing that I could face criminal charges, I allowed them to do that. I allowed them to go through my computer, and I allowed them to interrogate me.
"A lot of the questioning was very much focused around my work as a journalist. 'What do you do? Where do you report? Where do you go? Who do you interview? How do you make sure that your reporting is professional? How do you make sure your reporting is objective?'
Matt considers his reporting to be fair, balanced and objective. But then everyone's a critic, eh? Even border police want an editorial say, it seems.
"There are kind of two levels here. On the one hand, they're taking a particular interest in the Kurdish issue and asking: 'What do you think about the Turkish Government? What do you think about British foreign policy?'
"On top of that, they were also speaking to me as a journalist. I said to them: 'Google my name and you can read my reporting. It's there in The Independent, it's there in The Guardian and the New Statesman.' But it shouldn't matter. Even if I was writing for pro-Kurdish leftist outlets, they still shouldn't be doing this."
On both occasions that this happened, Matt was released without charge. And on both occasions, they confiscated his phone and laptop, and this time also the notes for a book he is working on.
As a result, he now has an ongoing legal challenge in Europe to try and overturn his ban from the Schengen zone as it is an obstacle for his work. "That's also why I'm working here [Belgrade], in the only part of Europe that's not in the Schengen zone right now, because I can't really work anywhere else."
He is also looking at legal options, hopefully with NUJ support, to get his possessions back and maybe even to persuade the police to offer more justification for stopping people under anti-terrorism laws when they don't actually suspect them of any terrorism offences.
"More attention should be drawn to this. Schedule 7 was used in quite a high profile case this year to detain a French union member – a publisher rather than a journalist – who was supported by the NUJ because, as I said, this is a power which doesn't really exist in Europe. What seems to have happened is the French government called the British government and said 'This guy is complaining about us; can you detain and interrogate him?' while denying him the right to silence, which obviously is convenient.
"It's concerning that these stops are increasing, particularly targeting the Kurdish community. And you know, a lot of people have nothing to do with the political question whatsoever. For example, a Welsh woman who organised a poetry reading that I gave in Cardiff was stopped on the way back from her holidays and interrogated. And it's being used increasingly to target journalists as well .
Matt confirmed that he was thankful to receive support from his local Branch and NUJ Wales, as well as from Reporters Without Frontiers, and hoped it would continue.
He also thanked LFB members – fellow freelancers – for their moral support and solidarity.