NSA-leak journalist Glenn Greenwald's partner held under terrorism law

  • 9 years ago
Edward Snowden, NSA spying and journalist Glenn Greenwald:
Outrage is spreading after Brazilian David Miranda was detained in London's Heathrow airport and interrogated for nine hours. Miranda is the partner of Glenn Greenwald, the Guardian journalist whom fugitive whistleblower Edward Snowden leaked details to about mass NSA surveillance.

Miranda was on his way back to Brazil from a meeting in Germany on tickets paid for by the Guardian, when airport authorities stopped him on August 18. He was taken to a room and his luggage was searched. His phone, laptop, DVDs, memory sticks, and a gaming device were confiscated.

Miranda says he was interrogated by seven agents in total who grilled him on every aspect of his life and relationship with Greenwald, details about Snowden and filmmaker Laura Poitras, who is working on stories related to the NSA leaks.

Miranda had couriered files from Greenwald to Berlin where Poitras lives, and was taking encrypted files given to him by Poitras back to Brazil, where he lives with Greenwald.

Schedule 7 of Britain's Terrorism Act allows for travellers under suspicion to be held and questioned for a maximum of nine hours without charge to determine if they present a terror risk. Most people stopped are detained for under three hours. David Miranda is one of the tiny number of people detained for the maximum allowable time - and he has never been accused of being a terrorist.

In an interview, Miranda said agents told him if he didn't cooperate with their interrogation they would put him in jail.

Greenwald and others say his detention is a gross misuse of the law and a clear attempt at intimidating journalists reporting on stories the US and British governments would rather keep a lid on.

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