Campaign group chief found guilty of refusing to divulge passwords

The international director of the campaign organisation Cage has been convicted of a terrorist offence after refusing to hand over passwords to his mobile phone and laptop.

Muhammad Rabbani, 36, was found guilty at Westminster magistrates’ court of wilfully obstructing police when he refused to cooperate at Heathrow airport last November. The test case could affect the way thousands of suspects stopped at UK airports and ports every year interact in the future with anti-terrorist officers.

Rabbani was given a conditional discharge for 12 months and ordered to pay £620 in costs. His lawyers plan to appeal to the high court on the grounds that existing police powers do not sufficiently protect privacy or legally privileged material.

The verdict confirms that police have the powers under schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000 to demand access to electronic devices and that refusal to cooperate is a criminal offence.

Rabbani was stopped in November 2016 as he was returning from a wedding in Qatar at which he had met a man who alleged he had been tortured in the United States. He had downloaded evidence about the allegations onto his laptop and iPhone in order to bring it back into the UK so that he could pass it on to British lawyers.

Emma Arbuthnot, the chief magistrate at Westminster magistrates court said Rabbani had taken a “calculated risk” when he decided refuse to hand over his passwords. She accepted, however, that he was of “good character” and had no previous convictions.

On two previous occasions, the court heard, Rabbani had been detained under schedule 7 powers, been asked to hand over his password and pin numbers but refused, and had been allowed to proceed without being charged.

Rabbani, who had been the subject of port stops on more than 20 occasions, emerged from the court to be greeted by supporters with flowers and chocolates. He had faced up to three months in prison and a heavy fine.

“I was prepared to face the outcome even if it meant a term of imprisonment,” he said. “As the judge said, the importance of passwords and privacy cannot be overstated.

“I have been convicted of protecting the confidentiality of my client. Our only option is to change the law. We will be appealing this decision.”

Gareth Peirce, Rabbani’s solicitor, said that the appeal would be to the high court. The implication of the verdict was that at the point of entry to the UK, she said, suspects faced a dilemma “like a gun being put to your head” by the police.

“The process of examination in court shows that there are no satisfactory protections [of legally privileged material],” she added. Recent articles had claimed that material obtained through port stops had been shared with GCHQ, the government’s monitoring organisation, and overseas intelligence services.

Cage, which was established in 2004, monitors the way security operations and anti-terror laws affect the Muslim community. It has campaigned against extra-judicial rendition of suspects to Guantanamo Bay.

In a statement given to officers after he was arrested, Rabbani said: “I considered that although the police were in law entitled to ask questions so that they could satisfy themselves I was not engaged in terrorist activity, that did not justify my … being required to expose all the sensitive contents of my phone to being copied and undoubtedly disseminated not just to police but to intelligence services and possibly elsewhere in the world — an unjustifiable, uncontrolled acquisition of material.”

Tom Little, counsel for the crown prosecution service, said that it was conceded that Rabbani had not been held as a result of a random stop.

The port stop had nonetheless been lawful, he added. The attempt to obtain the pin number or password did not involve any breach of Rabbani’s privacy rights under article 8 of the European convention of human rights.

Rabbani had not at the time suggested legally privileged material from clients of Cage were at risk of being revealed, Little said.

“This was a proportionate stop by the state in the limited circumstances of where it happens, ie at airports,” Little said.

PC Tariq Chowdhury, the officer who stopped him, said that he had never come across anyone refusing to give the passwords. Some people resisted initially but eventually complied with the order, he added.

Henry Blaxland QC, for Rabbani, told the court that the stop had not been lawful. Rabbani, he explained was not stopped for the purpose of a police inquiry into the preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism. He was detained for a “collateral purpose,” Blaxland said.

Nor was it legitimate, Blaxland added, because there is not adequate provision under schedule 7 port stops to exclude legally privileged, journalistic other private material from being read by police officers.