London police brand Occupy London 'terrorists'

[aidanjt]

The document was given to protesters at their “Bank of Ideas” base on Sun Street – a former site of financial corporation UBS. City police have stepped up an effort to quell the movement since they occupied the building on 18 November, with the document stating: “It is likely that activists aspire to identify other locations to occupy, especially those they identify with capitalism.

“Intelligence suggests that urban explorers are holding a discussion at the Sun Street squat. This may lead to an increase in urban exploration activity at abandoned or high profile sites in the capital.” The Occupy movement is listed alongside threats posed by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia (FARC), Al Qaeda and Belarusian terrorists.

“Just the words themselves are enough to deceive the public opinion and this is what we see at the moment,” Occupy spokesman Spyro Van Leemnen told Yahoo! News. “We are clearly nothing to do with extremists or terrorists, we are a peaceful group and we do use direct action to raise our point but definitely not terrorism.

“The building has been abandoned for a good few years now and we think it is crazy for a bank to have it empty and not used when we know at the same time there are so many family homes that have been repossessed. Occupying that building and giving it back to the community is definitely not a terrorist act,” he added.

Commenting on the document, City of London Police said: “[We] work with the community to deter and detect terrorist activity and crime in the City in a way that has been identified nationally as good practice.

“We’ve seen crime linked to protests in recent weeks, notably around groups entering office buildings, and with that in mind we continue to brief key trusted partners on activity linked to protests.”

Welcome to Nineteen Eighty-Four, ladies and gents.

[Knoxville]

In fairness since that document did the rounds the City of London Police have said the title of the document was "not helpful" (How long did it that the PR department to come up with that gem?) and that it in no way class the occupy movement as an equivalent threat to that presented by groups such as Al Qaeda.

Still, it speaks to a worrying lack of perspective on the part of the Police force imo. Especially considering the document was quite widely distributed amongst business's in the area :/

[roachcoach]

Or, it shows the epic lack of terror threat we face insofar as the threat is probably not dissimilar: and I'm not suggesting the occupy people are dangerous

I'm going with that one frankly.

[TheAnimus]

This just a storm in a tea cup thou isn't it? These police documents are simply for pigeon holing groups of people and most police know this.

It also shows just how pathetic the definition of 'terrorism' is, I find it odd that the student protests (who if you happened to be working at millbank last year, would have truly been a terrifying experience!) aren't classed as such.

Its a complete non story, and was probably done to justify getting some funding or some such.

Whats a bigger story is the fact that the police can and do use anti-terror laws on ordinary people all the time. Oh sir your taking a picture with a DSLR, well, guess what laws we have on the books we can use against you if we say your a terrorist.

But if we do repeal a lot of these laws brought in by New Labour (why is it always the more socialist powers that remove freedoms throughout European history?) and someone kills 60 or so people then whichever politictions removed the laws will be in a world of trouble