Two climate campaigners have been arrested on suspicion of planning to flydronesnearHeathrow Airport.
A group called Heathrow Pause, an offshoot ofExtinction Rebellion, planned to disrupt flights.
Activists had said yesterday that the devices would be flown on Friday at head height and away from flight paths to avoid any safety risk.
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But theMetropolitan Policesaid the action would be criminal andanyone taking part would be arrested.
Heathrow Pause tweeted that prospective drone pilots Roger Hallam and Mike Lynch-White had been “preemptively arrested”.
The group had announced it intended to fly the machines in the 3.1-mile exclusion zone around the airport, potentially disrupting hundreds of flights.
Members said its activists were “prepared to pay a very high price” to protest against the planned third runway.
They are also calling for the government to “tell the truth” about the climate crisis and act on parliament’s declaration of a climate emergency.
The action was designed to highlight “the grave risk of airport expansion during the climate and ecological emergency”, they said.
In a video of one of the arrests, outside an east London cafe, three plain-clothes officers handcuff Mr Hallam and caution him.
Someone off-camera asks what he’s being arrested for and he says: “Flying a drone – I haven’t done it yet – on conspiracy”.
Replying to another – incomprehensible – question, Mr Hallam, 53, an organic farmer and co-founder of Extinction Rebellion, says: “Whatever it takes,” before being put in a car.
Heathrow Pause said those flying drones were committed to “non-violence, transparency and accountability and to cooperating with the police as far as is possible”.
But police had urged anyone intending to fly drones illegally near Heathrow to abandon their plan, warning: “Anyone caught flying a drone without permission must expect to be arrested and prosecuted.”
Mr Hallam said earlier this week: “The Heathrow expansion is the biggest carbon-intensive infrastructure project in Europe, so I’ll be flying a drone at head height, some distance from Heathrow.
“It’ll be 100 per cent safe and 100 per cent illegal. So I’m likely to get arrested and I could be going to prison. ”
He said he was doing it for the future of the world’s children.
“And I’m also doing it because I’m a farmer. And as a farmer I’ve experienced the stress and horror of losing all my crops because of climate extremities. ”
But some social media users criticized the group’s actions, one tweeting: “I hope they all get locked up for the maximum sentence … flagrantly bragging they are going to break the law. People could die but you just don’t care – hypocrisy at it’s best. ”
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