Scotland Yard has paid £5,000 in an out-of-court settlement after allegedly unlawfully imprisoning a 17-year-old who was wrongly accused of being at a pro-Palestine protest where a building was spray-painted.
The case is said by civil liberties campaigners to be compelling evidence of a heavy-handed approach by the Met to the policing of demonstrations over the last year.
Xanthe Wells, now 20, who uses they/them pronouns, had first heard from the police in a voicemail message in February 2022 in which an officer said they wished to talk to them about CCTV footage in which Wells had been identified.
The following day, their mother was called and informed that Wells was a suspect in a crime and that she should bring them to a police station for a voluntary interview or face being “rounded up and arrested”, according to their lawyer’s letter of claim.
Wells attended Hammersmith police station two days later at midday, and was arrested on suspicion of burglary, affray and conspiracy to commit criminal damage. They were accused by an officer of being “radicalised”.
At the same time, their parents’ house was searched and officers seized a blue hoodie, a pair of trousers and a pair of white trainers belonging to Wells’s brother from the hall.
The case related to a demonstration in which Palestine Action sprayed red paint on the London headquarters of a company that it claimed did business with Israeli weapon manufacturers.
Wells had been at a family funeral in another part of London at the time of the incident and had not had any involvement with Palestine Action at that stage beyond following the group on Instagram.
They were released after six and a half hours. Their mother received a call from social services the following day, having been notified of the police concerns about Wells being radicalised.
Four days later, Wells was informed that there would be no further action taken by the police. Someone else was later convicted of the crime.
Wells, who is studying law and criminology at university, said they appeared to have been suspected on the basis of blurry CCTV footage and an Instagram post in which they had been standing next to one of those involved in the protest.
They said: “After that, I thought: I will look more into Palestine Action and what they do. So I got involved. The police kind of did that.”
Wells, whose mother is a vet and father works in digital marketing, has since been convicted of charges relating to protests, and received a 15-month sentence, suspended for 12 months, for causing about £100,000-worth of damage in 20 minutes at an Animal Rising protest at a dairy distribution centre in Hatfield, Hertfordshire.
They said: “I think the rage has affected me more than I thought. They kind of just assumed I’d done it, and they were making it sound really bad, that I was associated with these really bad people.
“I have quite high anxiety. And yeah, I would say a lot of that did start from this. I think it’s different being arrested and being prepared for it, versus them just kind of coming into your space.”
Kat Hobbs, a spokesperson for Netpol, an NGO that monitors the police, said: “To arrest an under-18 and conduct a raid on their home, all under the pretence of inviting them in for a ‘voluntary interview’, is a heavy-handed police response which can only be designed to terrify someone.
“That they had a case of mistaken identity only makes the police actions more disturbing in this case. Time and again we’ve seen police persecution of anyone who is even associated with Palestine Action, and people subjected to intimidation and sometimes even police violence if they are suspected of being part of the group. This kind of police repression has a chilling effect on the right to protest and is traumatic for anyone caught up in it.”
A Met police spokesperson said: “We can confirm that a settlement has been reached with a woman who was arrested after voluntarily attending a police station in February 2022. In reaching the settlement we accepted that her [sic] arrest had not been necessary in the circumstances. We will reflect on the outcome of this case, as with all cases, to identify any learning.”
