In a letter to the UK Home Secretary, Priti Patel, IPI joins four other media organizations in demanding an investigation into why Martin Banks, a British journalist based in Brussels, was held and interrogated for six hours by UK border guards about his journalism under the UK’s Counter Terrorism and Border Security Act.
READ THE FULL LETTER HERE
According to Banks, he was detained at the Eurotunnel border in Calais on February 26, where he was questioned about his professional work as a journalist including a press trip he undertook to the Donbas in Ukraine in 2014 and his reporting of the UK’s COVID-19 vaccine roll out.
Banks did not have the right to remain silent and was forced to hand over his passwords to his electronic equipment. He was released after six hours but his equipment, including a laptop and two mobile phones, were confiscated and not returned to him for another week.
The UK border guards thereby gained access to Banks’s journalistic material and sources, compromising the confidentiality of his sources and his work.
“We are deeply disturbed by the decision of the UK Border Guards to detain him under the counter terrorism act and to use that time to question him about his journalistic work. It is our belief that the border guards have abused their powers, resulting in the intimidation of a journalist and mistaking his journalistic as evidence of terrorist intent”, IPI said.
Martin Banks is a long-standing member of the International Press Association, a board member of the Brussels Press Club, a member of the National Union of Journalists and is an accredited journalist with the EU institutions and Belgian authorities.
The confiscation of his equipment raises further issues over intrusion into the work of a journalist and the protection of sources as a fundamental principle for the protection of media freedoms.
The letter calls on the UK Home Secretary to investigate the incident, to remind the UK border guards that journalism is not evidence of terrorism, and to urge that no more journalists will be subjected to similar treatment in future.