Post date: Aug 19, 2013 6:13:58 PM
Brazilian citizen David Miranda, the partner of a Guardian journalist linked toEdward Snowden, returns home to Rio de Janeiro after being detained and questioned for nine hours by British authorities in London.
RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL (AUGUST 19, 2013) (TV GLOBO) - The partner of the journalist with close links to Edward Snowden returned to his home country of Brazil on Monday (August 19) after British authorities used anti-terrorism powers to detain him as he passed through London's Heathrow airport.
Snowden is the former U.S. spy agency contractor who has been granted asylum by Russia and faces charges in the United States.The detained Brazilian, David Miranda, is the partner of Guardian journalist with links to Snowden, Glenn Greenwald.
Rio de Janeiro-based Greenwald has interviewed Snowden and used 15,000 to 20,000 documents that Snowden passed to him to reveal details of the U.S. National Security Agency's surveillance methods.
Miranda was questioned for nine hours by British authorities before being released without charge, a report on the Guardian website said.
The 28-year-old Miranda was returning to Brazil from Berlin and was in transit at Heathrow, Greenwald said in a column posted on the Guardian website. He said British authorities seized his partner's laptop, cellphone and USB sticks.
A British Metropolitan Police Service spokesman said Miranda had been detained at Heathrow airport under provisions of the 2000 Terrorism Act. That law gives British border officials the right to question someone "to determine if that individual is a person concerned in the commission, preparation or execution of acts of terrorism."
Miranda was kept the maximum time allowed by the Terrorism Act. He described his ordeal.
"I stayed in a room with six different agents that were entering and exiting. They spoke to me, asking me questions about my whole life. They took my computer, my video game, cellphone, everything," Miranda said.
Greenwald vowed to intensify his efforts.
"I will be far more aggressive in my reporting from now. I am going to publish many more documents. I am going to publish things on England too. I have many documents on England's spy system," Greenwald told reporters in Rio.
Greenwald wrote online that "This was obviously designed to send a message of intimidation to those of us working journalistically on reporting on the NSA and its British counterpart, the GCHQ," referring to Britain's Government Communications Headquarters.
Brazil's government complained about the detention of Miranda at Heathrow for nine hours incommunicado under the British anti-terrorism law.
The country's foreign minister Antonio Patriota said the detention of Miranda was not justified.
"Yesterday we sent a message that stated very clearly the position of the Brazilian government. We consider it unjustified, this nine-hour detainment, under the basis of a law that is applied to suspects with a possible involvement in terrorism. We hope that this does not happen again and today I will speak to Chancellor William Hague of the United Kingdom to communicate this message," Patriota said.
According to the Guardian, 97 percent of people who undergo this type of scrutiny are released after an hour.
A statement from the Guardian said it was "dismayed" at Miranda's detention and that it would be pressing British authorities for an urgent clarification.