OT - Police hold mother-of-three for reading 'Independent' outside Downing Street

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Topic:	Religions > Atheism
User:	"Meteorite Debris"
Date:	02 Jul 2006 12:20:36 AM
Object:	OT - Police hold mother-of-three for reading 'Independent' outside Downing Street

They hate our "freedom".
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article1152047.ece

Police hold mother-of-three for reading 'Independent' outside Downing
Street
By Terry Kirby, Chief Reporter
Published: 01 July 2006

An anti-Iraq war protester was questioned by police outside Downing
Street because she was reading The Independent.

Charity Sweet, 40, and a mother-of-three, was holding a copy of
Thursday's edition which carried the headline: "Warning: if you read
this newspaper you may be arrested under the Government's anti-terror
laws."

Inside was an article reprinted from Vanity Fair magazine which ran
across the first three pages of that day's issue of the newspaper. The
article, by the writer Henry Porter, accused the Blair Government of a
sustained erosion of civil liberties.

As she sat outside Downing Street, Ms Sweet was approached and
questioned by a police officer. When he had finished his inquiries she
was astonished to be handed a form detailing the reasons for his
interest which included "reading today's Independent".

Earlier this month, Steven Jago, an accountant and also an anti-war
protester and friend of Ms Sweet, was arrested by police and later
charged under the Serious and Organised Crime Act. He had been
carrying copies of the magazine which were confiscated by police. On
Thursday afternoon, after seeing The Independent had reprinted the
article, Ms Sweet decided she would demonstrate her solidarity with Mr
Jago and went to Downing Street to find him. Unsuccessful, she bought
a sandwich and decided to eat it while sitting down under a tree near
the gated entrance to Downing Street and reading the newspaper. She
was also wearing a sign around her neck warning against bullying.
After some minutes she was interrupted and questioned by a Scotland
Yard officer.

Ms Sweet, from Chatham in Kent, said: "It was intrusive and ridiculous
to think that I could not sit there and read the newspaper when I
chose to. I don't have any issues with the officer himself, he was
perfectly polite and just doing his job. He asked me who I was and
what I was doing there. I told him the publication of the article was
history in the making and I could not think of a more appropriate
place to sit down and read it. I don't think I was causing a problem
for anybody." She was not cautioned or arrested.

As is normal procedure, the officer handed Ms Sweet a form which set
out why a particular person is stopped and, as can happen, searched.
Under the section requiring a description of what the person stopped
had been doing, the officer wrote: "Sitting outside D Street with
Notification Around Neck about Bullying. And Reading Today's
Independent."

Ms Sweet was allowed to continue reading The Independent. She left
soon after, found Mr Jago and they went to sing protest songs and
hymns outside the Palace of Westminster.

Ms Sweet's interest in the Iraq conflict stems from the fact that her
first husband was an Iraqi Christian and their daughter, who is 18, is
therefore half-Iraqi. She said: "What has happened there since the war
is genocide. Life under that terrible dictator was actually far, far
kinder and that is a very sad state of affairs." Originally from
Canada, she has been living in the UK since 1991 and has two other
children, a girl aged seven and a 13-year-old boy.

She has been cautioned once before and was present when Mr Jago was
arrested. "I don't want to do things that get me arrested, because I
am a mother and sometimes I have my young children with me," she said.
"I am into building bridges, not burning them down."
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User: *"nemo"*
Title: Re: OT - Police hold mother-of-three for reading 'Independent' outside Downing Street	02 Jul 2006 04:38:16 AM