‘Targeted’ for defending Palestine: Lawyer fights back after police abuse of terror powers
Human rights solicitor Fahad Ansari is challenging the British government in the High Court after being detained and interrogated under controversial anti-terror laws while returning from a family holiday.
Ansari was stopped at Holyhead Port in Wales on 6 August 2025, where police questioned him for nearly three hours about his views on Palestine, the direct-action group Palestine Action, and even attempted to probe into his confidential client relationships.
Earlier this year, Ansari’s law firm represented Hamas in its application to be removed from the government’s list of banned organisations. Since then, says Ansari, he has “repeatedly come under attack for simply doing my job”.
“What happened to me at Holyhead was the latest escalation of my being targeted for simply doing my job, resulting in this unprecedented use of counter-terrorism powers against a practicing solicitor, interfering with solicitor-client confidentiality,” said Ansari.
Ansari specialises in national security cases and has practised law for over 15 years. He described the incident as a politically motivated abuse of Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000—a law that permits UK police to stop and question individuals at borders without any suspicion of wrongdoing.
The power, which can be used to detain people for up to six hours and seize electronic devices for seven days, has long been criticised by rights groups for its potential to violate civil liberties.
In legal documents seen by MEMO, Ansari asserts that the stop had no legitimate connection to terrorism. Instead, he was interrogated about whether he supported Palestine Action, whether he had attended any meetings, and whether he knew of any planned actions. One officer told him his wife thought the recent banning of the group was “ludicrous” and asked for his opinion—a line of questioning Ansari described as politically loaded and irrelevant to national security.
He was also questioned about his legal clients, including whether he acted for members of Palestine Action. Ansari refused to answer, explaining that doing so could breach legal privilege. “I told them I could not answer that question as it may involve legally privileged information,” he stated.” He was fingerprinted, photographed, and had his DNA taken, despite not being arrested or charged with any offence.
Police then approached his wife and demanded his mobile phone. Ansari informed them it was his work device, filled with sensitive legal material. He warned that compromising this information could endanger vulnerable clients, including torture survivors and individuals in deportation proceedings. Nevertheless, the phone was seized without any clear safeguards to protect privileged data.
The next day, while driving, his daughter’s phone displayed a notification indicating that someone had attempted to access her contacts from his device. Ansari believes this was a hacking attempt by the police, made possible by Apple’s Family Sharing system. “Clearly, the phone was not in my possession,” he said. “It seems the only explanation is that the police were trying to hack into my teenage daughter’s mobile phone.”
Ansari’s legal claim states that no credible basis was provided for the search or seizure. He argues that the detention and subsequent attempts to access his phone were unlawful, disproportionate, and politically motivated. Ansari claims that his detention had little to do with terrorism and instead amounted to an act of surveillance and intimidation aimed at penalising lawyers who defend victims of government crackdown on pro-Palestine activists.
The case raises wider concerns about the erosion of civil liberties in the UK. “The British state continues to encroach on our freedoms—banning protests, banning protest movements, and now targeting the lawyers who defend them,” Ansari said in a video statement about the case. “It is critically important that we push back and protect the rule of law and due process.”
Legal documents submitted by Ansari argues that the authorities acted outside the limits of their powers under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000, which is intended solely to determine whether a person is engaged in terrorism. By asking about his views on Palestine and his legal clients, the police, he says, strayed into areas with no bearing on terrorism and unlawfully interfered with the confidential relationship between lawyer and client.
The documents allege that the defendants failed to adopt proper safeguards once they became aware of the privileged material contained in Ansari’s phone. By seizing the device without such protections in place, they are accused of breaching established legal principles governing the handling of legally privileged information.
Ansari’s legal team argue that the stop, the seizure of his phone, and the attempt to access its contents were unlawful, disproportionate, and in violation of the very boundaries Parliament had set for the use of Schedule 7 powers.
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