UK - tourist photographer arrested

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John Ashworth
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UK - tourist photographer arrested

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Photographer held in London

Kathimerini English Edition
Friday May 15, 2009

A 53-year-old Greek amateur photographer will be tried in a London court on Monday on charges of “causing public harassment, alarm or distress” after photographing a young girl during a journey on the British capital’s Underground, provoking protests from the child’s mother.

Pericles Antoniou, who has practiced photography as a hobby for 25 years, had been taking snaps of the Underground during a visit to London with his family last month. When a woman complained that he had photographed her daughter, Antoniou said he apologized and deleted all the pictures, including of the girl, on his camera. But a man claiming to be the girl’s father referred the matter to police at the next Tube station, leading to Antoniou’s arrest.

“From that point on, everything was like a nightmare... they locked me up, did not allow me to communicate with anyone... took my shoes and kept my camera,” Antoniou wrote in a letter to the British Embassy in Athens. The 53-year-old, who claims to have been “humiliated” by the British police, has asked the embassy to intervene in order to stop “this outrageous case.”
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Steve Appleton
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Re: UK - tourist photographer arrested

Post by Steve Appleton »

The legal issues relating to taking and publishing photos of minors in the UK are very real and the penalties stiff.
I have been extra careful before placing photos containing passengers (especially children) on the FOTR website. In fact, the observant will realize that there have been deliberately few, if any, such pics placed on the FOTR front page.
We must all be aware that pics are constantly stolen off the web and that pics of minors can be easily misused by websites that are nowhere near as moral as the one belonging to FOTR.
"To train or not to train, that is the question"
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