A member of the Belfast cumann was with his heavily pregnant partner at a local supermarket shopping for groceries, while waiting on a taxi at the front doors of the busy supermarket two RUC officers past the couple smirking and stood across from them constantly staring. After 5 minutes the taxi arrived for the couple and as they were climbing in the 2 RUC members approached and pulled the man away from the taxi telling him he ...was being searched under the terrorism act, this was purposely said as loud as possible in front of dozens of people so as to try demonise this innocent man.
One of the 2 RUC members proceeded to tell the taxi driver and this mans partner to move on and that "this is going to take a while", when the victim of this stop and search asked why he was being searched the reply to him was "your involved in terrorist acts", they then searched this man infront of everyone, took his phone and took all of this mans details.
After nearly 10 minutes the man was asked did he want a copy of the stop and search details and when he replied yes the police said with a smile, "sorry the phone has just refreshed itself you'll have to give us all your details again", this man then told these cops that they had all his details to which they responded "you either tell us them here or down in the station", this innocent man was pressed to give his details again and after another 5-10 minutes they told him the phone was playing up and he would have to go to the station to get a copy of the search card, needless to say this man walked off and climbed into his still waiting taxi and went home and will be contacting his solicitor in the morning to log it and get the copy of the search record.
We utterly condemn this act of public intimidation on a man who is already plagued by RUC harassment on a daily basis and call for everyone to reject this farcical British police force and their tactics on republicans.
