UK police arrested a French publisher on terror charges in London after questioning him about his involvement in anti-government protests in France.
Two plainclothes officers approached Ernest Moret, a 28-year-old foreign rights manager for Éditions la Fabrique, at St Pancras station on Monday.
He was questioned for six hours. And later then arrested for alleged obstruction in refusing to disclose the passcodes to his phone and computer.
People condemned his treatment as an attack on the right to demonstrate. And later called for protests outside the UK embassy in Paris and the French Institute in London.
Moret arrived at St Pancras at 7.15 pm with his colleague Stella Magliani-Belkacem.
The two officers confronted the editorial director at the Paris-based publishing house.
Magliani-Belkacem told the Guardian: “When we were on the platform, two people, a woman and a guy, told us they were counter-terrorist police. They showed a paper called section 7 of the Terrorism Act of 2000 and said they had the right to ask him about demonstrations in France.”
She added: “I’m still shaking. We are in shock about what happened.”
She said French publishers had drafted a joint letter calling for a protest outside the British embassy in France on Tuesday evening about Moret’s treatment.
When the officers began questioning Moret, Magliani-Belkacem called her friend Sebastian Budgen. A senior editor at Verso Books in London, at whose home she and Moret had arranged to stay.
LAWYER FOR BUDGEN
Budgen arranged for a lawyer to visit Moret.
Moret also represents the French science fiction novelist Alain Damasio. And had arranged more than 40 appointments at the London book fair.
A joint press release from Verso Books and Éditions la Fabrique condemned Moret’s treatment as “scandalous”.
It said: “The police officers claimed that Ernest had participated in demonstrations in France as a justification for this act. A quite remarkably inappropriate statement for a British police officer to make. And which seems to clearly indicate complicity between French and British authorities on this matter.”
It added: “We consider these actions to be outrageous and unjustifiable infringements of basic principles of the freedom of expression and an example of the abuse of anti-terrorism laws.”
Budgen said: “It is causing a stink at the London book fair and there’s a big stink in France as well.
There’s been an increasingly repressive approach by the French government to the demonstrations, both in terms of police violence.
But also in terms of a security clampdown.”
Thousands of people took to the streets in France last month over Emmanuel Macron’s use of constitutional executive powers
The protests caused King Charles’s planned visit to France.
The writers’ association Pen International said.