Met pays out £5,000 after arrest of teenager wrongly accused of going to Palestine protest

Scotland Yard has paid £5,000 in an out-of-court settlement after allegedly unlawfully imprisoning a 17-year-old wrongly accused of being at a pro-Palestine protest where a building was spray-painted.

- Daniel Boffey

The case is said by civil liberties campaigners to be compelling evidence of a heavy-handed approach by the Met to the policing of demonstrations over the last year.

Xanthe Wells, now 20, from Oxford, who uses they/them pronouns, had first heard from the police in a voicemail message in February 2022 in which an officer said they wished to talk to them about CCTV footage in which Wells had been identified.

The following day, their mother was called and informed that Wells was a "suspect" in a crime and that she should bring them to a police station for a "voluntary interview" or face being "rounded up and arrested", according to their lawyers' letter of claim. Wells attended Hammersmith police station in west London two days later, and was arrested on charges of burglary, affray and conspiracy to commit criminal damage.

They were accused by an officer of being "radicalised".

Their parents' house was searched and officers seized a hoodie, trousers and a pair of trainers belonging to Wells's brother.