The Metropolitan Police have paid a five-figure sum to a left-wing French publisher after using anti-terror laws to stop, arrest and interrogate him on his involvement in protests.
Ernest Moret was visiting the London Book Fair in April last year when counterterrorism officers stopped him at St Pancras station, in central London, and asked whether he had been on anti-government demonstrations in France. The Met used wide-reaching Schedule 7 powers which allow them to stop anyone at the border to check whether they are terrorists, with no need for grounds for suspicion.
Moret, who works as a foreign-rights manager for the French publisher La Fabrique Éditions, was then arrested under different legislation for refusing to hand over his device passcodes, which he said was
