Police stop 'suspicious' Barry George - just three weeks after he was acquitted of killing Jill Dando

The man cleared of murdering Jill Dando has been stopped and searched by police for ‘acting suspiciously’ in the street.

Barry George, 48 – who was acquitted just three weeks ago of killing the BBC Crimewatch presenter – was approached by two officers in a patrol car near his home in North London.

The male and female officers used stop-and-search powers after Mr George was seen ‘hanging around’ parked cars carrying a holdall.

He was searched by the male PC, who found nothing suspicious, and was allowed to leave when the officers were called away to a traffic accident.

But Mr George – who spent eight years behind bars and endured two trials – has now instructed his lawyer to raise the matter with the Independent Police Complaints Commission alleging harassment.

He has told friends he was stopped at 11am on Friday as he was on his way to meet a female housing officer in a nearby cafe.

Mr George claims the two officers said they were going to search him because he looked at them in a ‘funny way’.

He has told a friend the WPC behaved aggressively towards him and told him he was going to be searched by her male colleague.

And he says the officers failed to issue him with a written explanation of why he was stopped, as required by police regulations.

A friend of Mr George told The Mail on Sunday: ‘Barry claims he was doing absolutely nothing wrong.

'He is very angry about his treatment and has instructed lawyers to make a complaint.’

Last night Mr George’s solicitor David Wells said: ‘Nobody has said to me that he was doing anything wrong, and there doesn’t seem to be anything that singled him out from anybody else.

‘Today is the first example I have of how the police are treating him as an innocent man. Some form of complaint will be made.’

Scotland Yard last night refused to comment, but a senior police source defended the officers’ actions.

‘They believed he was acting suspiciously and that is why they stopped him,’ the source said.

After his release, Mr George, who has an IQ of 75, said he could not have killed Miss Dando in April 1999 because he was stalking another woman at the time.