Richard Barnard, Sarah Wilkinson, Asa Winstanley and Richard Medhurst. These are some of the canaries in the coal mine for what is to come in the West as the region’s elite quickly becomes Israel’s international police. Medhurst joins host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report to talk about his own experiences in the United Kingdom and Austria, where federal agents and police arrested him and searched his home under draconian counterterrorism laws.
“I was just trying to tell the truth as best as I could with the facts that we had at that time and that's it. And I think they're trying to make an example out of me, definitely,” Medhurst tells Hedges.
Medhurst points to Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000 in the UK as one of the broad laws being used to silence people like him. “If they really want to, they can charge you for just saying a simple fact just because the fact is uncomfortable to the government or perhaps they can twist it into saying you're glorifying a group but it's not true,” he explains.
For Medhurst, the UK pinned Schedule 12(1A) on him, which he explains “has never been used before, and escalated it straight to an arrest.” They then took his “fingerprints, [his] DNA, [and] they put [him] in jail for 24 hours.”
Despite his accurate reporting, Medhurst says that the validity of what one says does not matter when it conflicts with the establishment line. “You're not glorifying anyone. You're just stating a fact, but they can still charge you. That's what's so dangerous about this law,” he said.
Austrian security service agents still possess most of Medhurst’s journalistic tools. There is still no clear time table as to when he will get his tools back.
As Medhurst explained:
“It wasn't just my phone and my laptop, which I also use for work, which are my work tools, but …you know, hard drive adapters, things that don't even have data on them, analog microphones. Why would you do that to someone unless you're trying to make a point that you don't want them to continue their work?”
