A woman who claimed she was identified in print as the relative of someone being investigated for alleged terrorism links has had her complaint rejected by the press watchdog.

Her home was raided as part of a police swoop and was identified in a report in the Luton News.

She complained to the Press Complaints Commission that by identifying her house the newspaper had identified her in breach of the old Clause 10 (Reporting of Crime).

She also claimed it had made her a potential target of local people who might believe she was a terrorist. She said that nobody at her address had been arrested or charged.

The story: ‘Homes raided in hunt for terrorists’, was published in March last year but the resolution of the complaint was delayed while the complainant was out of the country.

Clause 10 of the old Code was designed to prevent the innocent relatives of those accused or convicted of crime from being identified without their consent in the absence of a public interest. In this case, nobody had even been identified as being accused of crime, and the Commission rejected the complaint.

It said that the complainant had not been named in the article, which had not claimed that anyone living at her address had been arrested during the police raid there.

The Luton News had said it would be happy to clarify that nobody from the complainant’s home had been arrested or charged following the police raid, and it emphasised that it had simply reported an important and public event.

When the complainant indicated that she wanted no further publicity, the editor of the newspaper sought to resolve the complaint by sending a personal letter to her – as she had requested – in which he apologised for any distress caused to innocent people at her property.

The complainant rejected the editor’s apology since, she said, everyone who lived at her home was innocent. Moreover, she said that the editor had not admitted that he had erred.

The adjudication added: “On the broader point that the complainant had made about the alleged intrusion into her privacy, the Commission noted that the article had concerned a significant local event, at which the police’s presence would have been obvious and therefore well known locally.

“The newspaper was entitled to cover the story and to take a photograph of the scene.

“Such coverage did not, in the Commission’s view, show a lack of respect for the complainant’s private life in breach of the Code.

“She was, after all, not even mentioned in the piece. The complaint was rejected.”

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