© Evaristo Sa/AFP/Getty ImagesDavid Miranda, who was detained at Heathrow airport for nine hours last August.
Detention of former Guardian journalist's partner was justified by 'very pressing' interests of national security, judges sayThree high court judges have dismissed a challenge that David Miranda, the partner of the former
Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald, was unlawfully detained under counter-terrorism powers for nine hours at Heathrow last August.
The judges accepted that Miranda's detention and the seizure of computer material was "an indirect interference with press freedom" but said this was justified by legitimate and "very pressing" interests of national security.
The three judges, Lord Justice Laws, Mr Justice Ouseley and Mr Justice Openshaw, concluded that Miranda's detention at Heathrow under schedule 7 to the Terrorism 2000 Act was lawful, proportionate and did not breach European human rights protections of freedom of expression.
The ruling says that Miranda was stopped in transit between Berlin and Rio de Janeiro after meeting the film-maker Laura Poitras, who had been involved in making disclosures based on documents leaked by the US National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden.
Miranda was carrying encrypted files, including an external hard drive containing 58,000 highly classified UK intelligence documents, "in order to assist the journalistic activity of Greenwald".
The Guardian made his travel reservations and paid for the trip.
Laws said he noted that the seized material included personal information that would allow staff to be identified, including those deployed overseas.
Greenwald told the judges that the security services were well aware that the seized material was in connection with journalism and not terrorism. He said there was no evidence to indicate that any disclosure had actually threatened or endangered life or any specific operation.
Comment: So, let's just see if we got this straight.
A revolution, of sorts, has taken place in Ukraine in which the West (US and EU) is fully behind the opposition parties who are far-right extremists, anti-Semites and anti-gay... ostensibly in order to let Ukrainians to 'break free from the chains of corrupt government', but actually in order to remove a democratically elected leader of country that is a natural and key ally of Russia... whose leader in turn is attacked daily in the West for being an anti-democratic, gay-bashing, corrupt, extremist... but who actually is none of those things and is rather a lone voice of reason in a world of political elites gone utterly insane.
Confused?