A solicitor who had his mobile phone containing legally privileged material seized and downloaded by police was wrongly described in a police risk assessment as being a member of Hamas.
Fahad Ansari, who specialises in national security cases, argues that police unlawfully stopped and questioned him because they wrongly “equated” him acting as a lawyer for Hamas with being a member of the proscribed organisation.
The case is believed to be the first targeted use of Schedule 7 powers, which allow police to stop and question people and seize their electronic devices without the need for suspicion, against a practising solicitor.
The Court of Appeal ordered an immediate stay on Tuesday to a judicial review brought by Ansari while it considers whether police should be required by law to disclose details of their case against him.
Ansari, an Irish solicitor who represents Hamas in a legal appeal to have its proscribed status overturned in the UK, was stopped and questioned by police after returning home with his family from Ireland to Holyhead in August 2025.
Police risk assessment stated ‘Hamas’
A police officer who completed a risk assessment made a handwritten note under the heading “membership of a known group” stating “Hamas”.
According to a legal submission from Ansari’s barrister for a judicial review originally due to be held today, the police officer was “essentially” equating Ansari, who is not a member of Hamas, with his client.
The police officer confirmed in a witness statement that his note was inaccurate. “What I had intended to write was that Mr Ansari worked as a solicitor for Hamas, and not that he was a member of the group,” he said.
Ansari not questioned in earlier stop
It emerged that Ansari was stopped previously in 2024 under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act, before he represented Hamas, in what appeared to be a random stop.
He identified himself as a solicitor and was not asked any questions about Hamas or Palestine. He did not have his mobile phone seized, downloaded or copied, unlike his later Schedule 7 stop , barrister Hugh Southey KC, wrote in a skeleton argument.
He said the significant difference between the two Schedule 7 stops was that Ansari had made an application on behalf of Hamas before the second stop.
The chief constable of North Wales Police has made contradictory statements about the reasons for stopping Ansari for the second time in 2025.
In January 2026 she stated that “there was an underlying reason or reason for the stop: it was not random”. The chief constable now states that she has “not confirmed” that the stop was a “targeted stop”.
It appears that the chief constable has approached litigation heard in open court in a “confused, contradictory and less than candid manor”, Southey wrote.
Legally privileged material
The phone seized by North Wales Police, contained legally privileged material, including communications with clients, their families, witnesses and experts, documents, financial information, and internet research related to clients.
A police officer subsequently prepared a list of keywords, including names of UK proscribed organisations and keywords based on research the officer had conducted into Ansari, to allow an independent counsel to “sift and review” data on Ansari’s phone.
Ansari argues that the safeguards, including using an independent counsel to assess the contents of the phone, were inadequate to protect legally privileged material, and that he has no way of knowing whether such material was accessed by investigators.
The Chief Constable wrote to Ansari in March this year stating that the police had completed their examination of Ansari’s work phone. Ansari has sought confirmation whether police officers had inadvertently seen privileged material from the phone.
Lack of rights
The consequence of the approach taken by the Chief Constable of North Wales Police is that Ansari would be entitled to greater safeguards if he were investigated for having committed an actual offence, and where there had already been a judicial warrant, Southey wrote in the skeleton argument.
Ansari said that Court of Appeal had recognised that his argument for greater disclosure from the police had merit.
“Previously, the High Court allowed the police to rely on secret evidence. In situations like this, it’s normally expected that at least a summary of the allegations is shared to allow a semblance of a fair hearing,” he wrote in a post on LinkedIn.
The police’s apparent lack of distinction between being a member of Hamas and being a legal representative of Hamas raised “serious concerns,” and would deter lawyers from representing proscribed groups, he added.
“This is not Belfast in the 1980s when such messages were delivered by bullets, but the intention feels uncomfortably similar: represent clients and face consequences,” he said.
Phantom Parrot
A document leaked by whistleblower Edward Snowden in 2013, raised concerns that information collected from phones during Schedule 7 searches was being covertly collected at UK borders under GCHQ’s “Phantom Parrot” programme.
Ansari said that North Wales Police had declined to say whether information from his phone had been shared with any other organisations.
