UK Court Rules Raid On Pro-Palestine Journalist Was Illegal.

A UK Court Ruled That The Raid "Counter-Terrorism" Police Conducted On Journalist Asa Winstanley Was Illegal.

In October of last year (2024), UK counterterrorism police conducted a raid on the British investigative journalist Asa Winstanley.

He was accused under sections one and two of the “UK terrorism act” of supporting the “encouragement of terrorism”.

Based on this, the “counterterrorism police “served the journalist with warrants and other papers authorizing them to search his house and vehicle for devices and documents” because of “social media posts” he made.

After this raid, his “devices were seized” but he was “not charged with any offense”.

Despite the claims made by the UK “counterterrorism police,” Winstanley had never encouraged terrorism but focused his reporting on exposing Israel’s genocidal bombardment of civilians in Gaza and debunking genocide inciting atrocity propaganda used to justify it.

Because of this, the UK “counterterrorism police,” -which has recently functioned as the enforcement of the mass murdering Israeli government- seized his devices and accused him of supporting terrorism to silence his reporting on Israel and its war crimes.

Now, a UK court has ruled that the search warrant and raid were “illegal” and forced the “counterterrorism police” to return Winstanley’s devices to him.

The Electronic Intifada - the outlet where Winstanley writes- reported that “Mark Lucraft, London’s highest circuit judge, on 13 May ruled that a search warrant used by London’s Metropolitan Police to seize seven items from Winstanley’s home was unlawfully issued.”

The outlet reported that Lucraft, when issuing his ruling, wrote “I am very troubled by the way in which the search warrant was drafted, approved and granted where items were to be seized from a journalist”.

Along with this Lucraft “denied the police’s request for a ‘production order,’ a legal power that can be invoked in British courts to require journalists to disclose documents in limited cases”.

Winstanley’s lawyer, Tayab Ali, said, “This ruling is a resounding victory for press freedom and the rule of law. The police’s actions – raiding a journalist’s home under the guise of counter-terrorism – were not only unlawful, they were an egregious abuse of power aimed at intimidating a journalist whose work challenged the political status quo”.

Remaining Questions

While the UK courts thankfully ruled that the raid against Winstanley was “unlawful”, one major question remains: what triggered the illegal raid in the first place?

The first major question is, did the Israeli embassy in London have anything to do with the raid?

A redacted email obtained through FOIA by the activist group “Palestine Action” showed that on September 9th of 2024-one month before the raid on Winstanley- Nicola Smith, the head of international law for the British Attorney General’s Office shared the “contact information” of the UK counterterrorism police (CPS/SO15) to Daniela Grudsky Ekstein who is Israel’s deputy ambassador to the UK.

The email’s contents were redacted, but the fact that the contact information of the counterterrorism police was shared with the Israeli embassy only a month before the raid happened raises the possibility that the raid was conducted at the behest of the Israeli embassy in London.

Another important question is: Was the raid conducted as retaliation for Winstanley’s investigation into the Hannibal Directive?

The raid on Winstanley happened on October 17th of 2024, only 10 days after Winstanley published a lengthy investigation proving that Israel killed hundreds of its own people on October 7th by issueing the “Hannibal Directive” and calling to kill any potential Israelis who may be taken hostage and fire and all vehicles entering the Gaza strip, including those containing Israeli hostages.

This fact- which was previously reported by the Israeli paper Haaretz and the Australian public outlet ABC news, is something the Israeli government desperately wants to cover up, as it implicates them in murdering their own citizens and debunks their official narrative of what happened on October 7th- which they have used to justify their genocidal ethnic cleansing plan for Gaza.

Was the raid on Winstanley from the counterterrorism police called in by the Israeli embassy to punish him for the investigation? The timeline certainly matches up with this scenario.

Reports on Winstanley from the UK counterterrorism police shared with his lawyer raise even more questions.

On his Substack Winstanley wrote that “The police later disclosed to my lawyers two detailed reports (from October 2023 and February 2024) by their ‘Counter Terrorism Internet Referral Unit’, containing no less than 80 pages of screenshots of tweets alongside commentary from the police.”

He went on to write:

The first report states that it was compiled after ‘a complaint’ by an unspecified person or persons. As the judge summarised in his ruling: ‘The written supplication sets out that on 12th October 2023, a public complaint was received by the Applicant [the police] in relation to a number of posts’ alleged to have been made by me.

The second report states it was produced after the unit was ‘contacted by a UK-based counter extremism think tank who expressed concern about a number of posts by Twitter User @AsaWinstanley.’

He noted that the Think Tank “is not named in the report, but it’s highly likely that the police only consulted groups with a pro-Israel bias”.

Winstanley’s lawyer, Tayab Ali, said the UK counterterrorism police “must also scrutinise the external organisations they consult for advice, particularly those who appear to promote political agendas under the guise of ‘counter-extremism’” noting that “These groups are not neutral, and their influence is clearly leading the police to make deeply flawed and dangerous decisions about who they choose to target”.

This would fit a pattern that has shown up in Switzerland, Canada, and the United States of radical Zionists and Zionist groups weaponizing the legal system in an attempt to silence opponents of Israel.

In January of this year, Mario Fehr, the security minister of Zurich, issued an entry ban on journalist Ali Abunimah to prevent him from giving a speech in the city.

Abunimah was forced to spend a weekend in prison in Switzerland based on this ban.

Mario Fehr issued this ban based entirely on his fanatical Zionist political views. He had previously attended a “solidarity rally for Israel” where he supported Israel's genocidal onslaught in Gaza and called for Switzerland to cut off humanitarian aid to Palestinians.

In February of this year, the Zionist influencer Dahlia Kurtz got the pro-Palestine writer YvesEngler arrested in Montreal, Canada, because he criticized her pro genocide commentary, which she used to accuse him of harassment.

Kurtz has previously publicly called for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza and has implied that children in Gaza are legitimate military targets.

Engler was forced to spend five days in jail based on the fabricated harassment charge Kurtz brought against him.

Most recently, the United States District Court of Massachusetts found that a University of Massachusetts Turkish student, Efe Ercelik, was arrested by ICE based on the word of Betar USA.

Betar USA is a radical Zionist group that supports the “Kahane Chai” group, a militant zionist group that even the US State Department labels a domestic terrorist group.

Betar has written “we demand more blood” in response to a post documenting the number of babies killed in Gaza by Israel, and taken to social media to say “babies grow up in Gaza to become terrorists”, justifying Israel’s killing of Palestinian babies.

The people and “think tank” that sent information about Winstanley to the UK counterterrorism police were certainly Zionists attempting to silence him, in a manner similar to the above-listed instances in Switzerland, the US, and Canada.

Two Other “Unlawful” Cases.

While it is great news that the counterterrorism police were forced to return Winstanley’s devices due to the search warrant being “unlawful,” there have been other raids conducted on journalists under almost identical circumstances.

In August of 2024, the freelance journalist Richard Medhurst was arrested and charged at London’s Heathrow airport for violating section 12 of the “Uk terrorism act” which makes it a criminal offense to say something supportive of proscribed terrorist organizations.

Medhurst had all of his journalistic devices he was carrying seized by the UK authorities during this arrest.

Because Hamas and other Palestinian resistance groups are officially labeled as “terrorists” by the UK government, this was weaponized to charge Medhurst over his reporting in support of Palestine.

In February of this year, Medhurst was raided by police in Austria-where he resides- likely in coordination with UK authorities.

The Austrian police seized more of his journalistic devices, including “five or six different laptops, computers, Phones, USB sticks, hard drives, books, papers, documents,” and even a manuscript for a book the reporter was working on.

Journalist Stefania Maurizi reported that the UK police were attempting to force Medhurst to give over the passwords to “an iPhone and a Google Pixel” that they had seized from him at Heathrow airport, a demand Medhurst refused in order to protect his journalistic sources.

The Austrian raid seemed to have been directed by UK authorities in an attempt to intimidate Medhurst into giving over his passwords.

Also in August of 2024, the journalist Sarah Wilkinson had her house raided and devices seized by UK authorities for social media content she had posted in support of Palestinians.

In a statement to the news outlet “The National”, the UK “counterterrorism police” said “The court ruling determined that the devices were seized unlawfully due to an incorrect search warrant having been obtained – this was, in part, due to the devices in question belonging to a journalist”.

This same precedent goes for Wilkinson and Medhurst, in respect to their journalistic devices, meaning the raids against them are equally unlawful, and they should have their devices returned and the charges dropped.

The ruling in favor of Winstanley is a major win for free speech, but it is still deeply disturbing that the arrest even happened in the first place and that law enforcers around the world are carrying out lawfare campaigns at the behest of genocidal zionists desperate to silence their critics.

---

Note to readers: The Dissident is a reader-supported outlet. If you liked this article, consider becoming a paid subscriber.