The Metropolitan police have reached a settlement with a 68-year-old pro-Palestinian activist who said the force treated him "like a criminal" when he was detained under anti-terrorism legislation.
Tej Singh Bhandal was travelling back to the UK on Eurostar earlier this year when officers pulled him out of a queue at St Pancras International station in London. According to his account, he refused to hand over the pin code to his mobile phone and was then arrested and charged under schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000.
Bhandal spent several hours in police detention and later launched a legal challenge over the arrest. The Met has now agreed to settle his claim and to close the criminal investigation against him, the Press Association reported.
His lawyers said Scotland Yard accepted that backing and funding lawful political protest organisations, including the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) movement and the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, does not in itself establish any connection to terrorism. The Met police have been approached for comment.
Bhandal called his arrest "incredibly humiliating" and "an abuse of power". Speaking to the Press Association, he said: "I was handcuffed and led through the station in full view of the public. I felt like the tabloid newspaper stereotype of a person of colour, and I was treated like a criminal."
Bhandal, who is involved with the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, had also been arrested in 2025 during a police investigation into a Palestine Action-linked incident at the Elbit Systems factory in Bristol. On that occasion he was questioned by counter-terrorism officers over four days, his home was searched and his devices were seized, before he was released with no further action.
He believes an "intelligence flag" was placed on his name following that episode, which he says led to his arrest at St Pancras.
The settlement came as more than two dozen protesters were arrested outside the supreme court on Wednesday morning, where an appeal against the ban on Palestine Action was being heard. Bhandal said people were being "singled out by the authorities for activism" and argued that "the creeping criminalisation of protest action is a consequence of government policy."
Alex Kenney, a civil liberties lawyer at Hodge Jones + Allen, which represented Bhandal, said "adequate safeguards" were vital to stop the "arbitrary" use of anti-terrorism powers. "Our hope is that Tej's case leads to more stringent adherence to the statutory obligations under the Terrorism Act and changes how the police conduct themselves in future," she said.
