Stop and Search "illegal", says Euro court

The Home Office has pledged to appeal the ruling, but anger over the broad use of terror laws has been building in the UK for several years. The court noted that the number of searches recorded by the Ministry of Justice leaped from 33,177 to 117,278 between 2004 and 2008.

The powers have been employed to marshal protests outside Docklands events such as the DSEi arms fair and last year's G20 summit, but the court observed that an "individual can be stopped anywhere and at any time, without notice and without any choice as to whether or not to submit to a search".

Protest group I'm a Photographer, Not a Terrorist held a demonstration in Canary Wharf in September to complain against restrictions on amateur and professional photographers. Architectural photographer Grant Smith told The Wharf at the event that he had been halted on several occasions for taking pictures of spots such as the Gherkin and the church opposite Merrill Lynch in the City of London.

He said: "The counter terrorism argument has been regularly abused. It's become much worse in the last couple of years."

The search which sparked the European case occurred as Kevin Gillan and Pennie Quinton were heading to a demonstration at the DSEi arms fair at Excel on September 9 2003.

Mr Gillan was stopped and searched by two officers, and was allowed to go on his way after 20 minutes. Ms Quinton, a journalist, was also searched and ordered to stop filming despite showing her press cards.

The complaint went to the European court after it was unanimously dismissed by the House of Lords in 2006, having previously been rejected by the High Court in 2003.

The pair claimed the use of the Section 44 power breached the Human Rights Act on four counts, namely their right to liberty and security (article five), their right to respect for private and family life (article eight), their right to freedom of expression (article 10) and their right to freedom of assembly and association (article 11). The court agreed that article eight had been violated.

The ruling said that "in the court's view, the wide discretion conferred on the police under the 2000 Act, both in terms of the authorisation of the power to stop and search and its application in practice, had not been curbed by adequate legal safeguards so as to offer the individual adequate protection against arbitrary interference".

Following the ruling, Amnesty International called on the government to scrap the "abusive, discriminatory and unlawful powers".

Halya Gowan of Amnesty International's Europe Programme said: "These police powers to stop and search under the Terrorism Act clearly violate people's right to privacy and family life and the government must act urgently to scrap them.

"They also contravene the rights to liberty, freedom of expression and assembly, and freedom from arbitrary detention, all of which the UK is bound to uphold."

Policing and security minister David Hanson argued that Section 44 is "an important tool in a package of measures in the ongoing fight against terrorism".

He said: "I am disappointed with the ruling in this case as we won all other challenges in the UK courts, including at the House of Lords. We are considering the judgement and will seek to appeal."