Free Gaza returnees arrive at Heathrow – Press TV miss out on the images!

This afternoon I had the pleasure of going to Heathrow Airport to collect a couple of friends who were arriving home having spent a few days in Tel Aviv at a wedding.

I say pleasure because I always enjoy visiting airports, both here in the UK and Israel. I often like sitting in the arrivals lounge with a coffee and my ipod listening to the latest set by one of my favourite house DJ’s whilst I wait for whomever I am meeting.

This afternoon however the ipod stayed in the bag, for today was the day that 6 British citizens who participated in the latest publicity stunt by the Free Gaza organisation arrived back in the UK.

Free Gaza (background can be found here) isn’t an organisation I take seriously. They have shown time and time again that they have no interest in aiding Gazans – their sole purpose is to put on stunts that they know will lead to confrontation with the IDF and Israeli authorities.

Its because of one of those stunts that led to six Brits being deported today from Ben Gurion airport on EL AL flight LY 315 to Heathrow and to me being at the airport to watch their supporters fly Palestinians flags in a British Airport.

Still being new to this blogging lark I never realised that I would require a recorder and camera on a personal trip, but I managed to capture a couple of shots on my phone of some of those waiting for the brave comrades from FG – quality awful, sorry – some thoughts and comments after the pics!

The group waiting in terminal one probably was no more than a dozen or so people. Surrounding them were probably 6 or 7 armed police. This group was not out to make trouble, but as we have previously seen in London during the Anti Israel demonstration earlier this year (see my comments at 10:58 am here) waving a flag can be deemed by the police as a provocation and seeing as there were plenty of Israelis and Jews waiting for friends and family from Israel I assumed this to be the case.

The group was pretty much harmless. They interacted with the police in polite manner and even tried to engage some of them in debate.

But the real show happened a bit later and involved a man with a camera (pic below), who about ten minutes before I had been chatting to. He was a cameraman for Press TV, the Iranian states propaganda tool, and we discussed the Free Gaza crew and he told me that he was here to shot some coverage of the returnees.

About five minutes after I took this picture, the police stopped this man. Their intervention coincided with the arrival of the 6 deportees.

Their first question to him was whether he had permission from BAA (British Airport Authority) to film in the terminal, he claimed to be press covering a story. He told them that he had no authorisation from anyone to shot in the terminal, but claimed to have received a press release from the Free Gaza organisation and was sent out to shot some footage. Eventually he was joined by a woman dressed as any proud woman would dress if their pay packet came from theocratic thugs in Tehran.

After some ten minutes the police confiscated the data cards and issued a report.

Bit of a wasted afternoon for the Press TV contingent I think, but I guess when your own regime confiscates camera film, disallows photographing sensitive security areas, cuts of all mobile communication, they should be grateful that all they got was a police report – the joys of living in a democracy!

As for my friends, they finally got out of the terminal at about 15:10 tired and craggy and desperate to get to see their kids!

I love airports!