Above photo: Momodou Taal. CNN.
Following US political activism in ‘racist fishing expedition’.
London – Momodou Taal, a British student at Cornell University, was detained by UK police at Heathrow Airport this week under Schedule 7, a controversial stop-and-search power under the Terrorism Act 2000, which UN experts have repeatedly warned is misused against activists and minorities.
Taal was held for six hours under a law that does not require reasonable suspicion and removes the right to remain silent. He was questioned about his childhood, mosque, Islamic preachers, and friends. His DNA was taken, and his phone and laptop remain confiscated. The delay caused him to miss his onward travel, forcing him to spend his own money on a new ticket.
“It was clear they were waiting for me,” Taal said. “As soon as I disembarked the plane, three officers were there. When I asked why I was being detained, they said they were trying to keep the UK safe.”
“Funny, I thought,” Taal reflected. “Is being against genocide the unsafe position?”
The questioning, he said, focused intensely on his personal history rather than his political views. “The majority of the questions were about my personal history and none to very little questions about my political views,” he noted, adding that he was even asked whether he read Karl Marx.
He described the ordeal as a “racist fishing expedition against the right to advocate for freedom and oppose mass slaughter.”
“We’ve already seen it with the Filton 24 – the UK is using every trick in the book to hunt pro-Palestine activists,” Taal said.
His detention follows his forced departure from the United States in April. Vengeful U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents pursued him days after he filed a historic legal challenge alleging the Trump administration violated his First Amendment rights. Former President Trump had previously vowed to deport international students protesting for Palestinians, a policy later deemed unlawful. Taal had been suspended by Cornell in September for peaceful pro-Palestine protest and has never been charged with any crime.
“This stinks of British complicity in American intelligence operations and human rights abuses,” Taal said. “And not for the first time. It’s clear that powerful institutions who support genocide on both sides of the Atlantic don’t want their dirty linen aired in public. The UK needs to come clean about what they know and why they detained me. Did the Americans ask authorities in the UK—the submissive partner in the special relationship—to detain me?”
Taal’s detention coincides with revelations this week that United Nations Special Rapporteurs have raised “serious concern” with Cornell University over alleged human rights violations against Taal and another international student following their pro-Palestine activism.
The incident raises profound questions about intelligence sharing between the US and UK, and the due process afforded to individuals. Taal was never charged with a crime in the US, making his detention under a terrorism law upon return to Britain particularly alarming.
This case echoes a sordid history of UK complicity in U.S.-led human rights abuses. Earlier this year, the UK government implicitly acknowledged its role in the rendition and torture of Palestinian Guantanamo Bay detainee Abu Zubaydah, who was tortured in a CIA black site. Zubaydah long accused the UK of providing questions to his torturers; the UK settled his claim by paying a “substantial sum.”
UN Special Rapporteurs have long condemned the “disturbing” misuse of terrorism laws like Schedule 7, noting its application without reasonable suspicion is a “fundamental flaw” incompatible with human rights standards. The power is used disproportionately against ethnic minorities, activists, and journalists.
Background: Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000 allows officers at UK ports to stop, detain, and question anyone for up to six hours without reasonable suspicion to determine if they are involved in terrorism. Refusal to answer questions is a criminal offence. Multiple UN human rights experts and the UK’s own Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation have called for its reform.
