The Metropolitan Police have settled a legal claim brought by Tej Singh Bhandal, a 68-year-old pro-Palestinian activist arrested under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000 at St Pancras International station in London. Bhandal was pulled from a Eurostar queue, handcuffed, and detained for hours after refusing to provide the pin code to his mobile phone. The Met has now admitted the arrest was unlawful and apologised. Bhandal's legal team at Hodge Jones & Allen secured a key concession: Scotland Yard accepted that supporting and funding lawful political organisations — specifically the BDS movement and the Palestine Solidarity Campaign — does not automatically establish a link to terrorism. This is a narrow but structurally important admission. It draws a line, at least in this case, between political activism and the counter-terrorism apparatus. The backstory matters. Bhandal was previously arrested in 2025 as part of a counter-terrorism investigation into a Palestine Action-linked incident at the Elbit Systems factory in Bristol. He was questioned over four days, his house was searched, and his devices were seized — but he was released with no further action. He believes an intelligence flag from that episode triggered the St Pancras stop. If accurate, this describes a system where an unresolved flag can cascade into new enforcement actions without fresh evidence. Commander Helen Flanagan, head of Counter Terrorism Policing London, acknowledged the failure explicitly: the examination and arrest "did not meet the requirements of the legislation." She described Schedule 7 as a "vital tool" but committed to reviewing the case and applying lessons learned. The language is institutional boilerplate, but the admission itself is not. Police forces rarely concede unlawful arrest this cleanly. The settlement arrived on the same day more than two dozen protesters were arrested outside the Supreme Court during an appeal hearing against the ban on Palestine Action. Bhandal framed this as part of a broader pattern: "The creeping criminalisation of protest action is a consequence of government policy." Whether or not one shares that view, the factual throughline is visible — counter-terrorism powers are being applied in contexts that courts and the Met itself are now acknowledging as inappropriate. The structural question is whether this settlement changes anything beyond Bhandal's individual case. Alex Kenney, his solicitor, expressed hope that it would lead to "more stringent adherence to the statutory obligations under the Terrorism Act." Settlements, however, do not set precedent in the way judgments do. They resolve individual claims while leaving the underlying powers intact. Schedule 7 remains on the books, intelligence flags remain in databases, and the discretion of individual officers remains largely unreviewed until someone litigates. What this case reveals is the friction cost of over-broad security powers applied to political activism. A 68-year-old man was handcuffed and paraded through a major train station on the basis of an intelligence flag that the Met now concedes did not justify the action taken. The direct harm is to Bhandal. The systemic harm is to the credibility of counter-terrorism policing and the chilling effect on lawful protest.
