Police Scotland has been warned that they risked breaching the human rights of pro-Palestine activists by interfering with their rights to peaceful protest and to privacy.
Scotland’s Police Investigations & Review Commissioner (PIRC) has warned Police Scotland over its conduct towards pro-Palestine campaigners, saying that officers’ actions risked violating the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), including the rights to protest in peace and to privacy.
The PIRC, which oversees police conduct in Scotland, upheld three complaints from the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign (SPSC) after officers in Aberdeen visited one man at home to warn him off attending a rally, barred activists from entering a court and used an activists’ meeting to gather intelligence.
The PIRC added that officers investigating the SPSC’s complaints about the highly unusual incidents later misrepresented what the force had done, and instructed Police Scotland to appoint independent officers to entirely re-examine two of those complaints from the start.
In another incident, The Guardian reported, “the watchdog also criticised a uniformed sergeant for arriving at an activists’ workshop at a cinema without invitation”, and who then “gathered information about the group during the visit which was thereafter recorded on police systems.”
Sofiah MacLeod, chair of SPSC, told the paper that police activities against the campaign had been escalating since 2014.
She said: “They have really been trying to intimidate individuals as far as we’re concerned. That’s how it comes across, and we’re very pleased that PIRC has investigated the matter and asked the police to look again at the complaints.”
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