British police wrong to hold anti-war protesters

LONDON, Dec 13 (Reuters) Police who turned away protesters heading to a demonstration against the Iraq war were acting unlawfully, Britain's highest court ruled today.

About 120 anti-war campaigners were stopped on coaches heading to a protest in 2003 at the Royal Air Force base at Fairford in southwest England which US bombers were using as a staging point.

The coaches were held for two and half hours by officers in Gloucestershire before they were escorted back to London.

Lord Chief Justice Lord Bingham, who headed a team of five law lords, ruled that the police actions were ''wholly disproportionate'' and that they had breached the demonstrators' rights to freedom of movement and of lawful assembly.

He said the case raised ''important questions on the right of the private citizen to demonstrate against government policy and the powers of the police to curtail exercise of that right''.

Gloucestershire police had argued that it was entitled to take action to prevent potential disorder and had been backed by the Court of Appeal.

But the law lords overturned that decision, saying while it was reasonable to suspect some protesters might have wished to damage the RAF base, it was unreasonable to stop them all from going there.

The protesters' lawyer John Halford said the ruling had important implications for Britons' rights to demonstrate.

''It's a landmark judgement,'' he told BBC television. ''Now we have positive rights to protest under the European Convention on Human Rights and those have been firmly upheld today by the House of Lords.'' The courts had already ruled that police had acted unlawfully by detaining the protesters on their coaches.

Reuters BDP GC1742