Activists arrested during the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge‘s wedding have had a civil liberties case dismissed as ‘manifestly ill-founded’ by Europe’s human rights court.

Eight demonstrators were detained for several hours for security reasons then released without charge after the wedding in London on April 29 2011.

Police had information that two of the protesters wanted to disrupt the procession by dressing as zombies and throwing maggots as confetti, but the other six planned to attend peaceful protests, the ECHR heard. 

Police detained eight people and then released them without charge but the ECHR has thrown out the activists' case

Police detained eight people and then released them without charge but the ECHR has thrown out the activists' case

Police detained eight people and then released them without charge but the ECHR has thrown out the activists’ case 

They took their appeals to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) after the UK Supreme Court dismissed the case in 2017.

The applicants were named as Hannah Eiseman-Renyard, Brian Hicks, Edward Maltby, Patrick McCabe, Deborah Scordo-Mackie, Hannah Thompson, Daniel Randall and Daniel Rawnsley. 

Police say that Eiseman-Renyard and Scordo-Mackie were the activists who wanted to throw maggots.

But the <a style="font-weight: bold;" class="class" rel="nofollow noreferrer noopener" target="_blank" website reports that Hicks wanted to attend a ‘Not the Royal Wedding’ street party in Red Lion Square.

The others had planned a protest in Trafalgar Square and most of them had no previous convictions or cautions.

In a ruling published today, Magools the ECHR found a ‘fair balance’ had been struck ‘between the applicants’ right to liberty and preventing them from disturbing the public order and causing danger to the public’.

The ruling said: ‘The court noted that the UK courts had undertaken a comprehensive review of the background facts of the applicants’ cases.

‘Like the court, they held that the arrests had been necessary to prevent the likelihood of an imminent breach of the peace, taking into account the crowd size, international interest and ‘severe’ threat level on the day of the royal wedding.

The ECHR (pictured) has thrown out the activists' cases after the police said two of them planned to throw maggots

The ECHR (pictured) has thrown out the activists' cases after the police said two of them planned to throw maggots

The ECHR (pictured) has thrown out the activists’ cases after the police said two of them planned to throw maggots 

‘Furthermore, the applicants had been released as soon as the imminent risk had passed and in all cases their detention had only been for a matter of hours.

‘The UK courts had therefore struck a fair balance between the applicants’ right to liberty and preventing them from disturbing the public order and causing danger to the public.

‘The court concluded that the applications were inadmissible as manifestly ill-founded.’