“He was questioned for six hours and then arrested for alleged obstruction in refusing to disclose the passcodes to his phone and computer.”
Ernest Moret, 28, a rights manager for Éditions la Fabrique, got off the train at St Pancras to attend the London book fair. Two counter-terrorism officers used section 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000 to question him about French protests. The arrest was not for terrorism. It was for refusing to hand over his passcodes. Britain now treats a locked phone at the border as obstruction and a publisher’s politics as a counter-terrorism matter.