UK gave U.S. 'heads-up' prior to detention of Snowden's associate's partner at Heathrow

The United States has reportedly denied that it had sanctioned the detainment of David Miranda, the partner of the Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald, at the Heathrow Airport in Britain on Monday.

Washington has distanced itself from the action of detaining Miranda by saying that British authorities took the independent decision to detain him, the Guardian reports.

Miranda was returning to Brazil from Germany when he was detained by the British authorities under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act on Monday.

Officials had also confiscated his electronic equipments, including mobile phone, laptop, camera, memory sticks, DVDs and games consoles, the report added.

Britain has since been facing intense pressure to give a detailed explanation of the decision to detain the partner of the Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald.

Earlier, the White House had confirmed that Britain had alerted the U.S. authorities after Miranda's name had appeared on a passenger manifest of a flight from Berlin to Heathrow on Sunday morning and it was given a 'heads-up' before he was taken into custody for nine hours at Heathrow.

However, the Principal Deputy White House press secretary, Josh Earnest, later clarified that 'heads-up' meant that the decision to detain David Miranda was something that they had an indication of that it was likely to occur, but it was not something that they had requested.

Greenwald, who has written a series of stories about the NSA programs based on Snowden's files, had also criticized Miranda's detention.

The statement comes after the move was challenged by David Anderson QC, the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, calling for a review of schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000, which was used to detain Miranda.

Meanwhile, the Downing Street has said that the Metropolitan police would decide whether its officers had acted in a proportionate manner.