Moazzam Begg, from human rights group Cageprisoners, talks about his personal experience of airport harassment.
Begg was speaking at the launch of a website which details the human misery behind “Schedule 7” stops at British airports and to campaign for reform of this terrorism law.
Schedule 7 was introduced as part of the 2000 Terrorism Act and gives the police the right to stop and search people at airports, to fingerprint them and take their DNA, and to hold them for up to 9 hours without legal representation.
More than 70,000 people were stopped and questioned under the Schedule 7 law last year and although most of them were white a hugely disproportionate number were ethnic minorities or Muslims. And the most intrusive and humiliating searches were conducted on those of “Muslim appearance.”
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