LONDON: Police on Wednesday used a bomb disposal robot and carried out a controlled explosion on a package found in central London near the British parliament.
Although the package was later found not to be suspicious, emergency services were called to gardens next to the River Thames during the afternoon, a police spokesman said.
"We've just been told it's all been stood down -- non-suspicious," he told AFP.
An AFP photographer at the scene saw a bomb disposal robot being deployed and a small explosion was heard.
A building where many MPs have their offices was also cordoned off along with Victoria Embankment which leads to parliament.
The area was targeted in a terror attack last year when Khalid Masood mowed down and killed five pedestrians before fatally stabbing a police officer outside parliament.
Masood was then shot dead by a police bodyguard.
Salih Khater, a Sudanese-born British national, crashed his car into the security barriers outside parliament in August this year in another suspected attack.
He is due to go on trial for attempted murder.
Police carry out controlled explosion on ‘suspect package’ near British parliament
Police carry out controlled explosion on ‘suspect package’ near British parliament
- The package was later found not to be suspicious
Activist Peter Tatchell arrested over ‘globalize the intifada’ placard
- Arrest in London during Saturday protest an ‘attack on free speech,’ his foundation says
- Intifada ‘does not mean violence and is not antisemitic,’ veteran campaigner claims
LONDON: Prominent activist Peter Tatchell was arrested at a pro-Palestine march in central London, The Independent reported.
According to his foundation, the 74-year-old was arrested for holding a placard that said: “Globalize the intifada: Nonviolent resistance. End Israel’s occupation of Gaza & West Bank.”
The Peter Tatchell Foundation said in a statement that the activist labeled his Saturday arrest as an “attack on free speech.”
It added: “The police claimed the word intifada is unlawful. The word intifada is not a crime in law. The police are engaged in overreach by making it an arrestable offense.
“This is part of a dangerous trend to increasingly restrict and criminalize peaceful protests.”
Tatchell described the word “intifada,” an Arab term, as meaning “uprising, rebellion or resistance against Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.
“It does not mean violence and is not antisemitic. It is against the Israeli regime and its war crimes, not against Jewish people.”
According to his foundation, Tatchell was transported to Sutton police station to be detained following his arrest.
In December last year, London’s Metropolitan Police said that pro-Palestine protesters chanting “globalize the intifada” would face arrest, attributing the new rules to a “changing context” in the wake of the Bondi Beach attack in Australia.
“Officers policing the Palestine Coalition protest have arrested a 74-year-old man on suspicion of a public order offense. He was seen carrying a sign including the words ‘globalize the intifada’,” the Metropolitan Police said on X.
According to a witness, Tatchell had been marching near police officers with the placard for about a mile when the group came across a counterprotest.
He was then stopped and “manhandled by 10 officers,” said Jacky Summerfield, who accompanied Tatchell at the protest.
“I was shoved back behind a cordon of officers and unable to speak to him after that,” she said.
“I couldn’t get any closer to hear anything more than that; it was for Section 5 (of the Public Order Act).
“There had been no issue until that. He was walking near the police officers. Nobody had said or done anything.”
