A lawyer who filed Hamas’s challenge to proscription in the UK was recorded by police as being a member of the banned group, “equating him with his client”.
On a risk assessment form, a detective inspector, who authorised the detention of Fahad Ansari under the Terrorism Act on his return from a family holiday in Ireland, wrote “Hamas” in the space reserved for “membership of a known group”.
Ansari is challenging the stop at the port of Holyhead on 6 August last year, claiming his detention and the processing of data from his phone containing legally privileged lawyer-client communications were unlawful. The form was released as part of the legal process.
Ahead of Wednesday’s judicial review of the stop, Ansari said: “As a solicitor from Ireland, seeing this in black and white was chilling: it echoes a dark period when the British state targeted lawyers for representing members of another proscribed group [the IRA].
“This is not Belfast in the 1980s when such messages were delivered with bullets, but the intention is the same: represent Hamas and face consequences. By trying to intimidate lawyers like me, the British state is effectively seeking to strip my clients of their voice in court.”
In written submissions for this week’s trial, Hugh Southey KC, representing Ansari, said: “The claimant is not a member of Hamas. His only association with the organisation is his instruction as their solicitor in the de-proscription proceedings lodged in April 2025.”
In a witness statement the detective inspector who completed the risk assessment form wrote that its contents were “not accurate”, adding: “What I had intended to write was that Mr Ansari worked as a solicitor for Hamas, and not that he was a member of this group.” He claimed that it “did not affect any of the decisions that any other officers took in relation to Mr Ansari”.
Southey said that the witness statement, in which the detective inspector said “everyone clearly understood the position that Mr Ansari was the solicitor for Hamas” suggested that “at least, representation of Hamas was equated with membership. DI [police number] 2556 was essentially equating the claimant with his client”.
The barrister said that the first defendant in the case, the chief constable of north Wales police (the other defendant being the home secretary), had given “confused, contradictory and less than candid” explanations of whether the stop was random or targeted.
Southey said: “Between 8 and 12 August 2025, the claimant’s work mobile phone was downloaded and copied. The contents have been examined.
“This was a directed and targeted stop against a practising solicitor acting for persons of interest to law enforcement and the intelligence and security services.”
He added that Ansari suspects that “a key purpose, if not the primary purpose, of the stop was to obtain access to his phone”.
The submissions say Ansari had also been stopped in June 2024 in an apparent random detention, which is permitted under schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act, but – unlike the stop last year when he was returning from visiting his mother – was not asked questions about Palestine or Hamas.
Southsea said: “The significant difference in the intervening period of time was the application on behalf of Hamas on 9 April 2025.”
He added that when the de-proscription claim was filed, complaints were made to counter-terrorism police about Ansari, who was also the subject of a complaint by the then shadow secretary of state, Robert Jenrick, to the Solicitors Regulation Authority.
Both north Wales police and the Home Office declined to comment on the case while it is active.