Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe releases report on surveillance used since 1970s but refuses to inform any affected families

Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe said families of dead children whose identities were used would not be approached, as that could put undercover officers in danger. Photograph: John Stillwell/PA

Britain’s most senior police officer has offered a general apology for the “morally repugnant” theft of dead children’s identities by undercover spies who infiltrated political groups.

But Bernard Hogan-Howe, the Metropolitan police commissioner, has refused to tell any families if the identities of their children were stolen by the undercover officers. He said he wanted to protect the spies from being exposed.

In a report published on Tuesday, he admitted that at least 42 police spies stole the identity of children who had died before they were 14 years old.

But the total number of such spies could be far higher as he conceded that the technique could have been more widespread than initially believed.

Hogan-Howe said he “should apologise for the shock and offence the use of this tactic has caused” among the public, after the Guardian revealed details of the policing method in February.

The commissioner argued that the families could not be informed as it could lead to the exposure of the undercover officers sent to infiltrate the political groups.

“It was never intended or foreseen that any of the identities used would become public, or that any family would suffer hurt as a result. At the time this method of creating identities was in use, officers felt this was the safest option” he added.

His decision drew immediate criticism. Jenny Jones, a Green party member of the London Assembly, said: “This falls short of coming clean to all the families whose children’s identities were harvested. In giving a blanket apology they have avoided the difficult task of apologising to real people.”

The Met has sent letters of apology to 15 families whose children died young, but has neither confirmed nor denied whether identities were stolen.

One case concerned a suspected spy, deployed between 1999 and 2003, who allegedly stole the identity of Rod Richardson, who died two days after being born in 1973.

The family’s lawyer, Jules Carey, said that Barbara Shaw, the mother of the dead boy, was taking legal action as she felt her complaint had been “swept under the carpet”.

Carey said Hogan-Howe’s apology was a PR exercise. He added: “The families of the dead children whose identities have been stolen by the undercover officers deserve better than this. They deserve an explanation, a personal apology. The harvesting of dead children’s identities was only one manifestation of the rot at the heart of these undercover units.”

Peter Francis, one of the spies who originally blew the whistle on the tactic, said the police should offer a personal apology to the families in the cases of spies whose identity had already been exposed. He agreed that the spies whose work remained secret should be protected.

The report, on Tuesday, was produced by Mick Creedon, the Derbyshire chief constable who is conducting an investigation into the activities of the undercover spies over 40 years.

Creedon revealed that the technique was used extensively as far back as 1976 and was authorised by senior police. He reported that the tactic became “an established practice that new officers were taught” within a covert special branch unit known as the special demonstration squad (SDS), which spied on political groups.

“This was not done by the officers in any underhand or salacious manner – it was what they were told to do,” Creedon added.

One senior spy is quoted as saying the undercover officers “spent hours and hours … leafing through death registers in search of a name [they] could call his own”.

“The genuine identities of the deceased children were blended with the officer’s own biographical details,” Creedon said.

The spies were issued with fake documents, such as passports and driving licences, to make their alter egos appear genuine in case suspicious activists started to investigate them.

The last time the tactic was used, according to Creedon, was 2003, by a spy working for a second covert unit – the national public order intelligence unit (NPOIU) – which infiltrated political campaigns.

Creedon said it was highly possible that the tactic was used by undercover officers in other units which infiltrated serious criminal gangs. “It would be a mistake to assume that the use of identities of dead children was solely within the SDS and the NPOIU.”

He said that the use of the technique “however morally repugnant, should not detract from the [spies’] bravery”.

Rob Evans and Paul Lewis
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 16 July 2013 12.22 BST

Find this story at 16 July 2013

© 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

Bob Lambert admits to adopting the identity of a seven-year-old boy and has conceded to having four affairs while undercover

Bob Lambert was deployed as an animal rights activist named Bob Robinson in the 1980s.

A former police spymaster has claimed the practice of resurrecting the identities of dead children so they could be used by undercover officers was “well known at the highest levels of the Home Office”.

Bob Lambert, who is facing a potential criminal investigation over his work for a secret unit of undercover officers, admitted that when he was deployed as a spy himself, he adopted the identity of a seven-year-old boy who died of a congenital heart defect.

He also admitted to using his false identity in court and co-writing the “McLibel” leaflet that defamed the burger chain McDonald’s, resulting in the longest civil trial in English legal history.

Conceding publicly for the first time that he had four relationships with women while undercover, one of which resulted in him secretly fathering a child, he said: “With hindsight I can only say that I genuinely regret my actions, and I apologise to the women affected in my case.”

Lambert was deployed as an animal rights activist named “Bob Robinson” in the 1980s for a covert Metropolitan Police unit called the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) which deployed undercover officers in political campaign groups. In the 1990s, he was promoted to manage other undercover operatives.

Over the last two years the Guardian has detailed the covert work of Lambert, one of the most controversial spies to have worked for the SDS and its sister squad, the National Public Order Intelligence Unit.

Until now, Lambert has either declined to comment in detail or said the Guardian’s reports amounted to “a misleading combination of truth, distortions, exaggerations and outright lies”.

However, in a Channel 4 News interview broadcast on Friday, Lambert admitted that many of the allegations made against him were true. “My reputation is never going to be redeemed for many people, and I don’t think it should be,” he told the programme. “I think I made serious mistakes that I should regret, and I always will do.”

Lambert said he was arrested “four or five” times while undercover and in 1986 he appeared in a magistrates court charged with a “minor public order offence”. He said he had to appear in court using his alter ego – rather than his real name – in order to “maintain cover”.

He also admitted to co-writing the McLibel leaflet. “I was certainly a contributing author to the McLibel leaflet,” he told the programme. “Well, I think, the one that I remember, the one that I remember making a contribution to, was called What’s Wrong With McDonald’s?”

Asked if that was ever disclosed to the court during the long-running civil trial, he replied: “I don’t know the answer to that question.”

Although he admitted having relationships with women, Lambert denied it was a deliberate tactic in the SDS to use relationships to gain access, saying “probably I became too immersed” in his alter ego. “I’d always been a faithful husband,” he said. “I only ever became an unfaithful husband when I became an undercover police officer.”

Harriet Wistrich, a lawyer representing eight women involved in relationships with Lambert and other undercover police said that there was a systematic pattern in which operatives repeatedly used long-term relationships to build their cover.

Almost all of the undercover officers identified so far – including those known to have worked under Lambert – had sexual relationships while operating covertly.

An SDS spy who has become a whistleblower, Peter Francis, has said that when he was deployed as an anti-racist campaigner, his superiors asked him to find “dirt” that could be used to smear the family of Stephen Lawrence, the black teenager who was stabbed to death in a racist attack in 1993.

His revelation has since triggered further investigations into alleged covert tactics used against the Lawrence family, their supporters and Duwayne Brooks, a friend of Stephen and the main witness to the murder.

On Friday, police chiefs admitted bugging a meeting with Brooks and his lawyer, Jane Deighton. Deighton said that Brooks, who is now a Lib Dem councillor, conveyed his concern in a meeting with the deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg.

In a previous Channel 4 News broadcast, Lambert denied the unit was involved in seeking to smear the Lawrence family during his tenure as deputy head of the unit.

He had a supervisory role when other spies, such as Jim Boyling and Mark Jenner, formed long-term relationships with people they were spying on. All are now under investigation.

The deployments of Francis, Lambert, Boyling and Jenner are detailed in a new book: Undercover: The True Story of Britain’s Secret Police.

Lambert has also been accused in parliament of igniting an incendiary device in a branch of Debenhams as part of a fire-bombing campaign by the Animal Liberation Front. Repeating earlier denials, he told Channel 4 News that the claim was “false”.

The home secretary, Theresa May, is coming under mounting pressure to announce an independent public inquiry into the affair. So far she has indicated that two pre-existing inquiries – one run by a barrister, the other an internal Met police review – are capable of investigating the allegations surrounding the Lawrences and Brooks.

Paul Lewis and Rob Evans
The Guardian, Saturday 6 July 2013

Find this story 6 July 2013

© 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

Bob Lambert had a five-year covert career using the alias Bob Robinson
The married office slept with four women and fathered a child with one
Lambert claims that being undercover led to his bad behaviour

Back in the day: During a covert career in which he infiltrated various groups, Bob Lambert has spoke of his disgust at some of his actions

A former Scotland Yard police officer who fathered a child with one of several targets he had relationships with while working undercover has apologised to the women.

Bob Lambert said he would always regret the ‘serious mistakes’ he made during a covert career which saw him use the identities of dead children, give evidence in court under his false name and co-author a libellous leaflet.

Mr Lambert used the alias Bob Robinson during his five years infiltrating environmentalist groups, when he was with the special demonstration squad (SDS), the Metropolitan Police unit that targeted political activists.

The revelation that the married officer slept with four women – fathering a child with one – sparked outrage.

In an interview with Channel 4 News, he said he accepts his behaviour was morally reprehensible and a gross invasion of privacy.

‘With hindsight, I can only say that I genuinely regret my actions, and I apologise to the women affected,’ he said.

‘I’d always been a faithful husband. I only ever became an unfaithful husband when I became an undercover police officer.’

The ex-officer declined to reveal whether his superiors were aware of the child – insisting he would only discuss that with an investigation into the activities of undercover police activities being led by the chief constable of Derbyshire.

Mr Lambert said he ‘didn’t really give pause for thought on the ethical considerations’ of adopting the identity of a dead child in 1984 as it was standard practice at the time.

‘That’s what was done. Let’s be under no illusions about the extent to which that was an accepted practice that was well known at the highest levels of the Home Office,’ he told the programme.

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He confirmed that he had appeared in court as Bob Robinson but could not say whether the judiciary was made aware by the police that he was doing so.

‘On occasions I was arrested as Bob Robinson and to maintain cover I went through the process of arrest, detention, and on occasions, appearing in court,’ he said.
Lambert insists he was unaware of any campaign to smear family and friends of Stephen Lawrence

He denied it amounted to perjury as ‘the position was that I was maintaining cover as Bob Robinson’.
But asked if the court was ‘made aware’, he added: ‘Well, that’s what needs to be established.’

Mr Lambert also confirmed that he helped write a libellous leaflet that attacked fast food giant McDonald’s and triggered the longest civil trial in English history.

McDonald’s famously sued two green campaigners over the leaflet in a landmark three-year high court case.

It was not disclosed during the costly civil legal proceedings brought by McDonalds in the 1990s that an undercover police officer helped write the leaflet.

‘I was certainly a contributing author to the McLibel leaflet. Well, I think, the one that I remember, the one that I remember making a contribution to, was called What’s Wrong With McDonalds?’, he told Channel 4.

Over the line: Bob Lambert in a more recent picture, fathered a child with one of his targets

Asked if that fact was disclosed during the proceedings, he said: ‘I don’t know.’

He repeated his rejection though of claims that he planted an incendiary device in a Debenhams store in Harrow in 1987, calling that a ‘false allegation’.

Mr Lambert, who was an SDS manager for five years, earlier this week insisted he had not been aware of any campaign against the family of murdered black teenager Stephen Lawrence.

Those claims were made by another veteran of the unit, Peter Francis, who alleges he was told to find information to use to smear the Lawrence family – who are calling for a public inquiry to examine the issue.

Home Secretary Theresa May has said they would be looked at by the Derbyshire probe and a separate inquiry led by barrister Mark Ellison QC into alleged corruption in the original Lawrence murder investigation, but has left open the possibility of other action.

‘My reputation is never going to be redeemed for many people, and I don’t think it should be,’ Mr Lambert said.

‘I think I made serious mistakes that I should regret, and I always will do. I think the only real comfort I can take from my police career is that the Muslim Contact Unit was about learning from mistakes.’

Belinda Harvey, one of eight women who are suing the Metropolitan Police over relationships with men who turned out to be undercover officers, rejected his apology.

‘Almost everything he said to me was a lie; why would I possibly believe what he says to me know.’ she told Channel 4.

‘If it hadn’t been for the case we’re bringing against the police, he would never have apologised and I would have lived the rest of my days not finding out the truth.’

Former director of public prosecutions Lord Macdonald of River Glaven said the latest evidence strengthened the case for a judge-led public inquiry.

‘It is as bad as I think we thought it was,’ he said.

‘He seems to have admitted a great deal of the conduct that people feared had been taking place.

‘It now sounds as though not only senior police officers but senior civil servants may have known what was going on.

‘It’s no good having this multitude of inquiries that are going on at the moment, one of them conducted by the police themselves which is pretty hopeless in my view.

‘We need a single public inquiry under a senior judicial figure to examine what happened, what went wrong, who authorised it and most of all to reassure us that its not going on still.’

By Daily Mail Reporter

PUBLISHED: 00:37 GMT, 6 July 2013 | UPDATED: 01:06 GMT, 6 July 2013

Find this story at 6 July 2013

© Associated Newspapers Ltd

Investigation into covert policing has found widespread use of the practice.

Senior police leaders are set to make an unprecedented national apology after hundreds of names of dead children were used to create false identities for undercover officers.

An investigation into covert policing has found widespread use of the practice.

Undercover officers told The Times that they were trained to use names of the dead and it had become “standard practice”.

Special branch units used the names while infiltrating criminal gangs, animal rights activists and football hooligan firms, it is claimed.

Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, will be questioned about the method after it was revealed that officers were told to gather “dirt” on the family of Stephen Lawrence.

Sources say that the practice may have been used in MI5 and MI6 and that several thousand identities of dead infants, children and teenagers may have been assumed by undercover officers.

An apology will be made senior police in the coming days.

Tom Foot
Friday, 5 July 2013

Find this story at 5 July 2013

© independent.co.uk

Police chiefs are expected to formally apologise for using the names of dead children to create fake identities for undercover officers.

It had been thought that only officers in secret police units such as the Met Police’s Special Demonstration Squad, which was closed in 2008, had adopted dead children’s names as a new identity.

But Operation Herne, an ongoing investigation into the conduct of undercover police, has revealed that the practice was more widespread than originally thought and used by forces across the country.

Standard practice: It had been thought that the practice of using dead children’s names as identities for undercover officers was restricted to Scotland Yard’s Special Demonstrations Squad, but the practice is now said to have been more widespread

According to sources, undercover police officers infiltrating criminal networks and violent gangs were given dead people’s identities as ‘standard practice’, reported The Times.

The technique, which was regularly used in the 1960s and 1990s, is thought to have been last used in 2002.

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But it is thought that the technique was not restricted to police forces with other agencies such as HM Revenue & Customs said to have adopted the practice.

The apology could come as early as this month but police are not expected to contact families of the dead people whose names were used through fear that it could put officers who have taken part in undercover operations in the past in danger.

A way in: Dead children’s identities were used by undercover offices to infiltrate violent gangs and demonstration groups

A source told The Times: ‘This wasn’t an anomaly, it wasn’t something that was used in isolation by just one unit.

‘If you are infiltrating a sophisticated crime group they are going to check who you are, so you need a backstop, a cover story that has real depth and won’t fall over at the first hurdle.

Disapproving: Policing minister Damien Green has expressed his disappointment at the use of dead children’s names by police units

‘The way to do that was to build an identity that was based on a real person.’

It was reported earlier this year that around 80 names were used by officers over a 30 year period.

Set up in 2011, Operation Herne, which is expected to cost around £1.66million a year, will examine the conduct of all ranks of officers and even look at the actions of former Home Secretaries.

Both The Home Affairs Committee and Police minister Damian Green have spoken of their ‘disappointment’ that dead children’s names were used in investigations.

Back in may, Derbyshire Chief Constable Mick Creedon admitted that the practice had been widespread

A raft of allegations have been made since former PC Mark Kennedy was unmasked in 2011 as an undercover officer who spied on environmental protesters as Mark ‘Flash’ Stone – and had at least one sexual relationship with a female activist.

The revelation comes before Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan Howe appears before MPs to answer questions over a number of controversies including claims last month that the family of murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence were targeted by undercover officers who were assigned to ‘get dirt’ on them.

Quiz: Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe will face questions from MPs over a number of controversies

It also emerged that police admitted bugging meetings involving Duwayne Brooks, the friend who was with Stephen the night he was attacked.

The claims affecting Mr Brooks came after former undercover officer Peter Francis alleged that he had been told to find information to use to smear the Lawrence family.

Mr Francis, who worked with Scotland Yard’s former Special Demonstration Squad, spoke out about tactics that he said were used by the secretive unit in the 1980s and 1990s.

Investigation: A raft of allegations have been made since former PC Mark Kennedy was unmasked in 2011 as an undercover officer who spied on environmental protesters as Mark ¿Flash¿ Stone ¿ and had at least one sexual relationship with a female activist

By Steve Nolan

PUBLISHED: 11:07 GMT, 6 July 2013 | UPDATED: 11:13 GMT, 6 July 2013

Find this story at 6 July 2013

© Associated Newspapers Ltd

Mark Kennedy, a British police officer who spent seven years infiltrating environmental and activist groups while working undercover for the Metropolitan Police force in London, may have monitored an American computer scientist and spied on others while in the United States.

The computer scientist, Harry Halpin, said that he was at a gathering of activists and academics in Manhattan in January 2008 that Mr. Kennedy — then using the pseudonym Mark Stone — also attended. He said Mr. Kennedy collected information about him and about a man and a woman who were accused later that year of associating with “a terrorist enterprise” and sabotaging high-speed train lines in France.

In addition to Mr. Halpin’s assertions, documents connected to the case indicate that prosecutors in Paris looked to American officials to provide evidence about a handful of people in the United States and events that took place in New York in 2008.

“Mark Kennedy spied upon myself on United States soil, as well as Julien Coupat and Yildune Levy,” Mr. Halpin wrote in an e-mail, naming two defendants in the group known in France as the Tarnac 10, after the small mountain village where several of them had lived in a commune.

Mr. Halpin added that Mr. Coupat introduced him to Mr. Kennedy in the fall of 2007. “It appears that Mark Kennedy also passed information to the F.B.I. that I knew Julian Coupat,” he added.

Reached via e-mail on Thursday, Mr. Kennedy, who now works with The Densus Group, a security consulting firm based in the United States, declined to comment on Mr. Halpin’s statements.

In 2010, Mr. Halpin said that F.B.I. agents detained him for five hours after he arrived at John F. Kennedy International Airport from Europe, seizing his computer and threatening put him in jail if he did not agree to provide information about Mr. Coupat. Mr. Halpin said that he refused but the agents let him go when they were asked to explain the charges against him.

A spokesman for the F.B.I. in New York, James Margolin, declined to comment on the encounter described by Mr. Halpin.

The accounts of events in New York provided by Mr. Halpin and others added a new twist to two dramas that have received widespread attention in Europe, where they have slowly unraveled over the past few years.

Mr. Kennedy’s actions while spying on political activists in Britain have brought embarrassment to Scotland Yard, as officials there have been forced to confront allegations of inappropriate behavior by some undercover operatives.

As reported in The Guardian newspaper, Mr. Kennedy was said to have had sexual relationships with a number of women connected to groups he had infiltrated.

In 2011, the trial of six people accused of planning to take over a coal-fired power plant collapsed amid claims, denied by Mr. Kennedy, that he had acted as an agent provocateur. Mr. Kennedy was also shown to have worked undercover in more than 20 other countries, including Iceland, Spain and Germany, where members of parliament have raised questions about his role.

Eventually, 10 women, including three who said they had intimate relationships with Mr. Kennedy, sued the police in London saying that they had formed strong personal ties with undercover officers. Later, it was reported in British papers that Mr. Kennedy sued the police, saying that his superiors had failed to prevent him from sleeping with an activist and falling in love.

In France, l’affaire de Tarnac, as it is known, has become a cause célèbre among civil libertarians who have criticized the use of terrorism statutes against people suspected of sabotage but not accused of harming anyone. The defendants have denied wrongdoing, but the authorities have portrayed them as dangerous subversives who plotted attacks against the state then “refused to answer questions, or gave whimsical answers” about their activities.

An unusual element of the case involves a book called “The Coming Insurrection” by an anonymous group of authors called the Invisible Committee. The book advocates rebellion against capitalist culture, encourages readers to form self-sufficient communes and calls for “a diffuse, efficient guerrilla war to give us back our ungovernableness.” Prosecutors have said that Mr. Coupat and his comrades wrote the volume. The suspects denied authorship but Mr. Coupat told journalists in France that the book had merit.

While the Tarnac case has moved slowly through the French legal system, documents have emerged showing that F.B.I. agents were posted outside the Manhattan building where the activists gathered in 2008, videotaping the arrival and departure of Mr. Halpin, Mr. Coupat and Ms. Levy, among others. Those tapes were later given to French prosecutors along with a detailed log compiled by the F.B.I. agents.

As the French investigation continued, documents show that prosecutors in Paris asked officials in the United States about a “meeting of anarchists” in New York and about several people who could be connected to Mr. Coupat. They also asked for information about a low-grade explosive attack in March 2008 that damaged an armed forces recruitment center in Times Square.

In 2012, letters show that Justice Department officials said they had not identified any connection between the people at the Manhattan gathering and the attack on the recruitment center. The officials also gave French prosecutors background information on some American citizens who appeared to have visited the commune in Tarnac and records of an interview that F.B.I. agents had conducted with an assistant professor and French philosophist at New York University who had translated “The Coming Insurrection.”

The professor, Alexander Galloway, told the agents that he had taught the books in a class on political theory and French philosophy, but had never met Mr. Coupat.

Official documents do not mention Mr. Kennedy but several people from New York said that he spent about a week there in early 2008 on his way to visit a brother in Cleveland. During that period, witnesses said Mr. Kennedy attended several informal gatherings, sometimes with Mr. Coupat and Ms. Levy.

…

March 15, 2013, 3:06 pm
By COLIN MOYNIHAN

Find this story at 15 March 2013

Copyright 2013 The New York Times Company

Mark Jenner lived with a woman under a fake name. Now she has testified to MPs about the ‘betrayal and humiliation’ she felt

Mark Jenner, the undercover officer in the Metropolitan police’s special demonstration squad, who went by the name of Mark Cassidy for six years – then disappeared.

He was a burly, funny scouser called Mark Cassidy. His girlfriend – a secondary school teacher he shared a flat with for four years – believed they were almost “man and wife”. Then, in 2000, as the couple were discussing plans for the future, Cassidy suddenly vanished, never to be seen again.

An investigation by the Guardian has established that his real name is Mark Jenner. He was an undercover police officer in the Metropolitan police’s special demonstration squad (SDS), one of two units that specialised in infiltrating protest groups.

His girlfriend, whose story can be told for the first time as her evidence to a parliamentary inquiry is made public, said living with a police spy has had an “enormous impact” on her life.

“It has impacted seriously on my ability to trust, and that has impacted on my current relationship and other subsequent relationships,” she said, adopting the pseudonym Alison. “It has also distorted my perceptions of love and my perceptions of sex.”

Alison is one of four women to testify to the House of Commons home affairs select committee last month.

Another woman said she had been psychologically traumatised after discovering that the father of her child, who she thought had disappeared, was Bob Lambert, a police spy who vanished from her life in the late 1980s.

A third woman, speaking publicly for the first time about her six-year relationship with Mark Kennedy, a police officer who infiltrated environmental protest groups, said: “You could … imagine that your phone might be tapped or that somebody might look at your emails, but to know that there was somebody in your bed for six years, that somebody was involved in your family life to such a degree, that was an absolute shock.”

Their moving testimony led the committee to declare that undercover operations have had a “terrible impact” on the lives of innocent women.

The MPs are so troubled about the treatment of the women – as well as the “ghoulish” practice in which undercover police adopted the identities of dead children – that they have called for an urgent clean-up of the laws governing covert surveillance operations.

Jenner infiltrated leftwing political groups from 1994 to 2000, pretending to be a joiner interested in radical politics. For much of his deployment, he was under the command of Lambert, who was by then promoted to head of operations of the SDS.

While posing as Cassidy, he could be coarse but also irreverent and funny. The undercover officer saw himself as something of a poet. A touch over 6ft, he had a broad neck, large shoulders and exuded a tough, working-class quality.

By the spring of 1995, Jenner began a relationship with Alison and soon moved into her flat. “We lived together as what I would describe as man and wife,” she said. “He was completely integrated into my life for five years.”

Jenner met her relatives, who trusted him as her long-term partner. He accompanied Alison to her mother’s second wedding. “He is in my mother’s wedding photograph,” she said. Family videos of her nephew’s and niece’s birthdays show Jenner teasing his girlfriend fondly. Others record him telling her late grandmother about his fictionalised family background.

Alison, a peaceful campaigner involved in leftwing political causes, believes she inadvertently provided the man she knew as Mark Cassidy with “an excellent cover story”, helping persuade other activists he was a genuine person.

“People trusted me, people knew that I was who I said I was, and people believed, therefore, that he must be who he said he was because he was welcomed into my family,” she said.

It was not unusual for undercover operatives working for the SDS or its sister squad, the national public order unit, to have sexual relationships with women they were spying on. Of the 11 undercover police officers publicly identified, nine had intimate sexual relations with activists. Most were long-term, meaningful relationships with women who believed they were in a loving partnership.

Usually these spies were told to spend at least one or two days a week off-duty, when they would change clothes and return to their real lives. However, Jenner, who had a wife, appears to have lived more or less permanently with Alison, rarely leaving their shared flat in London.

It was an arrangement that caused personal problems for the Jenners. At one stage, he is known to have attended counselling to repair his relationship with his wife. Bizarrely, at about the same time, he was also consulting a second relationship counsellor with Alison.

“I met him when I was 29,” she said. “It was the time when I wanted to have children, and for the last 18 months of our relationship he went to relationship counselling with me about the fact that I wanted children and he did not.”

Jenner disentangled himself from the deployment in 2000, disappearing suddenly from Alison’s flat after months pretending to suffer from depression.

The police spy left her a note which read: “We want different things. I can’t cope … When I said I loved you, I meant it, but I can’t do it.” He claimed he was going to Germany to look for work.

It was all standard procedure for the SDS. Some operatives ended their deployments by pretending to have a breakdown and vanishing, supposedly to go abroad, sending a few letters to their girlfriends with foreign postmarks.

Alison was left heartbroken and paranoid, feeling that she was losing her mind. She spent more than a decade investigating Jenner’s background, hiring a private detective to try to track him down. She had no idea he was actually working a few miles away at Scotland Yard, where he is understood to still work as a police officer today.

The strongest clue to Jenner’s real identity came from an incident she recalled from years earlier when he was still living with her. “I discovered he made an error with a credit card about a year and a half into our relationship,” she said. “It was in the name Jenner and I asked him what it was and he told me he bought it off a man in a pub and he had never used it. He asked me to promise to never tell anyone.”

The Metropolitan police refused to comment on whether Jenner was a police spy. “We are not prepared to confirm or deny the deployment of individuals on specific operations,” it said.

Alison told MPs that the “betrayal and humiliation” she suffered was beyond normal. “This is not about just a lying boyfriend or a boyfriend who has cheated on you,” she said. “It is about a fictional character who was created by the state and funded by taxpayers’ money. The experience has left me with many, many unanswered questions, and one of those that comes back is: how much of the relationship was real?”

Paul Lewis and Rob Evans
The Guardian, Friday 1 March 2013

Find this story at 1 March 2013

© 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

Inquiry hears claims of 10 or more women having sexual relations with undercover officer who infiltrated eco-activists

Mark Kennedy’s evidence saying he had sexual relationships with two people is disputed by women taking legal action against the police. Photograph: Philipp Ebeling

Mark Kennedy, the police spy who infiltrated the environmental movement, appears to have misled parliament over the number of sexual relationships he had with women while he was working undercover.

Kennedy told a parliamentary inquiry that he had only two relationships during the seven years he spied on environmental groups.

However, at least four women had come forward to say that he slept with them when he was a police spy.

Friends who knew Kennedy when he was living as an eco-activist in Nottingham have identified more than 10 women with whom he slept.

Kennedy was the only undercover police officer to give evidence to the inquiry conducted by the home affairs select committee.

He testified in private, but transcripts of his evidence released on Thursday reveal that he claimed he had sexual relationships with “two individuals”.

But three women who say they are Kennedy’s former lovers are part of an 11-strong group taking legal action against police chiefs for damages.

A fourth, named Anna, previously told the Guardian she felt “violated” by her sexual relationship with Kennedy, which lasted several months.

…

Rob Evans and Paul Lewis
The Guardian, Friday 1 March 2013

Find this story at 1 March 2013

© 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

Here you can browse the report which was ordered by the House of Commons to be printed 26 February 2013.

Find this story at 1 March 2013

Contents

Terms of Reference

Introduction

The legal framework governing undercover policing

Responsibility for undercover policing

The use of dead infants’ identities

Operation Herne

Conclusion

Conclusions and recommendations

Formal Minutes

Witnesses

List of printed written evidence

List of Reports from the Committee during the current Parliament

Oral and Written Evidence

5 February 2013 i

5 February 2013 ii

5 February 2013 iii

5 February 2013 iv

Written Evidence

The story of Bob Lambert reveals just how far police may have gone to infiltrate political groups

The grave of Mark Robinson and his parents in Branksome cemetery in Poole, Dorset. Bob Lambert adopted the boy’s identity, abbreviating his second name to Bob. Photograph: Roger Tooth for the Guardian

The words inscribed on the grave say Mark Robinson “fell asleep” on 19 October, 1959. He was a seven-year-old boy who died of a congenital heart defect, the only child to Joan and William Robinson. They died in 2009 and are buried in the same grave, listed on the headstone as “Mummy” and “Daddy”.

It is perhaps some solace that Mark’s parents never lived long enough to discover how the identity of their son may have been quietly resurrected by undercover police without their knowledge. The controversial tactic – in which covert officers spying on protesters adopted the identities of dead children – stopped less than a decade ago. More than 100 children’s identities may have been used.

Last week the home secretary, Theresa May, announced that a chief constable from Derbyshire would take over an inquiry into undercover policing of protest, after revelations by the Guardian into the use of stolen identities.

Despite an internal investigation that has cost £1.25m, senior officers seem genuinely baffled at the activities of two apparently rogue units that have been monitoring political campaigners since 1968.

The story of the officer who appears to have used the identity of Mark Robinson, adopting it as his own, reveals much of what has gone wrong with police infiltration of political groups. Bob Lambert, who posed as an animal rights campaigner in the 1980s, not only adopted the identity of a dead child. He was also accused in parliament of carrying out an arson attack on a Debenhams department store and deceiving two women into having long-term sexual relationships with him.

One of them has now revealed how Lambert fathered a child with her before vanishing from their lives when his deployment came to an end in 1989. She only discovered he was an undercover police officer eight months ago – more than 20 years after he disappeared from the lives of mother and child, claiming to be on the run.

Using the pseudonym Charlotte, she said in a statement to the home affairs select committee: “There can be no excuses for what he did: for the betrayal, the manipulation and the lies … I loved him so much, but now have to accept that he never existed.”

Gravestone

The story of how Bob Lambert became Bob Robinson begins on the outskirts of Poole, Dorset, in 1983. For almost 25 years, a sculpture of the boy stood guard above the grave in Branksome cemetery. “Safe in the arms of Jesus,” the engraving said.

Lambert would have come across the boy’s paperwork in St Catherine’s House, the national register of births, deaths and marriages. It was a rite of passage for all spies working in the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS), a unit dedicated to spying on protesters. For ease of use, SDS officers looked to adopt the identities of dead children who shared their name and approximate date of birth. They called it “the Jackal Run”, after its fictional depiction in Frederick Forsyth’s novel The Day of the Jackal.

Mark Robinson was the ideal match. He was born in Plumstead, south-east London, on 28 February, 1952 – just 16 days before Lambert’s date of birth. His second name was Robert, which the spy could abbreviate to Bob. He died of acute congestive cardiac failure after being born with a malformed heart. Other SDS officers are known to have chosen children who died of leukaemia or were killed in road accidents.

Undercover police did not merely adopt the names of dead children, but revived entire identities, researching their family backgrounds and secretly visiting the homes they were brought up in.

When the spy made his debut in London as a long-haired anti-capitalist, he introduced himself as Bob Robinson and said he was born in Plumstead. He had fake identity documents, including a driving licence in the name of Mark Robinson. Recently, he is understood to have said his full undercover alias was Mark Robert Robinson. The date of birth he gave is still in a diary entry of one close friend: it was the same date as that of the dead child.
Bob Lambert, aka Bob Robinson Photograph: guardian.co.uk

Double life

It was the start of a surreal double life. For most of the week he lived as Robinson, a gardener and active member of the environmental group London Greenpeace. For one or two days a week, he returned to the more conventional life with his wife and children in Hertfordshire. SDS insiders say Lambert was revered as one of the best operatives in the field. He helped jail two activists from the Animal Liberation Front who were convicted of planting incendiary devices in branches of Debenhams in protest at the sale of fur in July1987.

Lambert’s relationship with Charlotte, then 22, helped bolster his undercover credibility. When they met in 1984, Lambert was her first serious relationship, and 12 years her senior.

“He got involved in animal rights and made himself a useful member of the group by ferrying us around in his van,” she said. “He was always around, wherever I turned he was there trying to make himself useful, trying to get my attention. I believed at the time that he shared my beliefs and principles. In fact, he would tease me for not being committed enough.”

Around Christmas that year, Charlotte became pregnant. “Bob seemed excited by the news and he was caring and supportive throughout the pregnancy,” she said. “Bob was there by my side through the 14 hours of labour in the autumn of 1985 when our son was born. He seemed to be besotted with the baby. I didn’t realise then that he was already married with two other children.”

Two years later, Lambert’s deployment came to an end. He told friends police were on his tail and he needed to flee to Spain. “He promised he would never abandon his son and said that as soon as it was safe I could bring our baby to Spain to see him,” Charlotte said. Instead, the man she knew as Bob Robinson disappeared forever.

She was left to bring up their son as a single parent. It was an impoverished life, made worse because there was no way she could receive child maintenance payments. “At that time I blamed myself a lot for the break-up and for the fact that my son had lost his father,” she said.

When Charlotte’s son became older, the pair tried to track down Bob Robinson, who they presumed was still living in Spain. They could not have known he was working just a few miles away.

In the mid-1990s, Lambert was promoted to head of operations at the SDS, giving him overarching responsibility for a fleet of other spies. Just like their boss, they adopted the identities of dead children before going undercover to cultivate long-term and intimate relationships with women. That was the unit’s tradecraft and Lambert, with his experience in the field, was its respected spymaster. “I chatted to Bob about everything.” said Pete Black, an SDS officer who infiltrated anti-racist groups under Lambert. “You used to go in with any sort of problems, and if he could not work out how to get you out of the shit, then you were fucked.”

After his senior role in the SDS, Lambert rose through the ranks of special branch and, in the aftermath of 9/11, founded the Muslim Contact Unit, which sought to foster partnerships between police and the Islamic community.

Intimate relationships

He was awarded an MBE for services to policing and retired to start a fresh career in academia, with posts at St Andrews and Exeter universities.

‘It was my Bob’

In 2011, Lambert’s past returned to haunt him. That year Mark Kennedy, another police spy, was revealed to have spent seven years infiltrating eco activists. He had several intimate relationships with women, including one that lasted six years. Kennedy worked for the National Public Order Intelligence Unit, another squad dedicated to monitoring protesters and the second, according to the Metropolitan police, believed to have used the identities of dead children.

Amid the outcry over Kennedy’s deployment, there was a renewed push among activists to unmask police infiltrators. It was some of Lambert’s old friends in London Greenpeace who eventually made the connection, comparing YouTube videos of Lambert speeches with grainy photographs of Bob Robinson in the 1980s.

Lambert was giving a talk in a London auditorium when members of the audience – veterans from London Greenpeace – confronted him about his undercover past. He left the stage and walked out of a side door. Outside, he was stony-faced as he was chased down the street by a handful of ageing campaigners. He jumped into a taxi and melted into the afternoon traffic.

It was only the start of a cascade of claims to tarnish the senior officer’s reputation. In June last year, the Green MP Caroline Lucas used a parliamentary speech to allege that Lambert planted one of three incendiary devices in branches of Debenhams. No one was hurt in the attack on the Harrow store, in north-west London, which caused £340,000 worth of damage. Pointing to evidence that suggested Lambert planted the device, the MP asked: “Has another undercover police officer crossed the line into acting as an agent provocateur?”

…

Rob Evans and Paul Lewis
The Guardian, Thursday 21 February 2013 18.00 GMT

Find this story at 21 February 2013
© 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

Met police’s deputy assistant commissioner admits to Commons committee that both units broke internal guidelines

Keith Vaz, chairman of the Commons home affairs committee, criticised the Met police for not apologising for the ‘gruesome’ practice. Photograph: Linda Nylind for the Guardian

Police chiefs have admitted that a second undercover unit stole the identities of dead children in the late 1990s or even more recently in a series of operations to infiltrate political activists.

Growing evidence of the scale of the unauthorised technique – nicknamed the “jackal run” after its fictional depiction in Frederick Forsyth’s novel The Day of the Jackal – now means the number of families affected could total more than 100.

The Metropolitan police’s deputy assistant commissioner Patricia Gallan told a parliamentary inquiry that both secret police units broke internal guidelines when they employed the technique, which MPs criticised as “gruesome” and “very distressing”.

She had been called to give evidence to the Commons home affairs committee following the Guardian’s disclosures that the Metropolitan police had secretly used the tactic without consulting or informing the children’s parents in order to bolster their fake persona when operating undercover.

But, despite mounting concern over the practice, she declined to apologise to the families of the children until Scotland Yard had completed an internal investigation.

She said: “I do absolutely appreciate the concern and I understand the upset and why people are very distressed about this.”

Keith Vaz, chairman of the committee, told her: “I’m disappointed that you’ve not used the opportunity to be able to send out a message to those parents who have children who may have had their identity being used that the Met is actually sorry that this has happened.”

In another development, a family who believe that their son’s identity was stolen as recently as 2003 has lodged a complaint against Scotland Yard. Barbara Shaw, the mother of a baby who died after two days, is pressing the police to reveal the truth and to issue an apology. She said she was deeply upset to discover that her child’s identity was used in this way. “He is still my baby. I’ll never forget him,” Shaw said.

The Guardian has disclosed that, over three decades, undercover police officers in a covert unit known as the special demonstration squad had been hunting through birth and death records to find children who had died in infancy. Once they found a suitable candidate, they then created an alter ego to infiltrate political groups for up to 10 years. They were issued with official records such as national insurance numbers and driving licences to make their personas more credible, in case the campaigners in the groups they were spying on became suspicious and began to investigate them.

The SDS adopted the technique after it was founded in 1968. The evidence suggested that the unit stopped using it in the mid-1990s when officials records became more computerised.

However it now appears that the tactic has been used more recently by a second unit which started operating in 1999.

The National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU), which is still running, was also tasked with gathering intelligence on protesters.

Gallan told the committee that the practice “has been from the evidence I have seen confined to two units, the SDS and the NPOIU”.

Pressed by MPs on whether the squads had gone “rogue” and had gone out of control, Gallan said they were operating at the time outside of police’s guidelines for undercover operations. “From what I have seen, the practices at that time would not be following the national guidelines.” She said the units had departed from the accepted practices, but she had yet to find out why.

MPs also heard allegations that a suspected undercover police officer stole the identity of the dead child, Rod Richardson, when he posed as an anticapitalist protester for three years.

Jules Carey, the lawyer for the family, told the committee : “I am instructed by one family who have a son who was born and died in 1973 and we believe that a police officer used the name Rod Richardson which is the name of the child and was deployed as an undercover police officer in about 2000 to 2003 using that name and infiltrated various political groups.

…

Rob Evans and Paul Lewis
The Guardian, Tuesday 5 February 2013 21.15 GMT

Find this story at 5 February 2013 
© 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

Agenten van de Britse Metropolitan Police, de grootste politiedienst van het
land, hebben tussen 1968 en 1994 de identiteit van ongeveer 80 dode kinderen gestolen. Ze gebruikten de aliassen bij undercoveroperaties zonder dat de ouders van de overleden kinderen op de hoogte waren van deze werkwijze. Dat blijkt uit een onderzoek van The Guardian.

Het lijkt op een spionagethriller maar over het Kanaal was het gedurende drie decennia een vaak gebruikte manier om personen te volgen: de identiteit stelen van kinderen die het leven hadden gelaten in een ongeval of kinderen die bezweken waren aan de gevolgen van een slepende ziekte.
1968

De praktijken zouden begonnen zijn in 1968 met als doel het bespioneren van groeperingen die protesteerden tegen onder meer kernenergie, racisme, oorlog en het kapitalisme. Agenten van de Metropolitan Police gaven leden van de speciale eenheid Special Demonstration Squad de toestemming om de aliassen te gebruiken. De agenten kregen zelfs (valse) officiële documenten als paspoorten en rijbewijzen en gingen kijken bij de huizen waar de kinderen waren opgegroeid.

Het hele proces werd “jackal run” genoemd, naar de roman ‘The Day of the Jackal’, waarin auteur Frederick Forsyth zulke praktijken omschrijft.
Stasi

Een voormalig lid van de Special Demonstration Squad – de dienst werd in 2008 ontmanteld – vergelijkt de praktijken zelfs met die van de Stasi, de geheime dienst van de DDR.

…

05/02 Buitenland

Find this story at 5 February 2013

©1994-2013 Concentra Media Groep N.V.

A former Scotland Yard officer who infiltrated groups of environmental “terrorists” has been dragged into a high-profile investigation in France over claims he provided “fantasist” information leading to 10 activists’ arrest.

Mark Kennedy, 42, who spent seven years posing as “ecowarrior” Mark Stone, was exposed as a police spy in Britain last year following the collapse of a prosecution against environmental activists.

During his undercover life, he visited 11 countries on more than 40 occasions, fielding information to the UK’s National Public Order Intelligence Unit, now the National Domestic Extremism Unit.

Since he was unmasked, 20 convictions in cases he was involved in against activists have been quashed in the court of appeal. He was also sued by three female eco-activists for being “duped” into having sexual relations with a policeman.

Now his name has cropped up in the investigation into French activists over an alleged anarchist plot to overthrow the state.

Their lawyers insist that the investigation is unfairly based on information Mr Kennedy allegedly provided to his UK police unit, including claims the activists discussed and “practised” building improvised explosive devices.
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The French leftists are under formal investigation for allegedly sabotaging high-speed train lines – seen as a high-profile symbol of the French state – in November 2008, causing massive delays but no injuries. They deny any wrongdoing.

Mr Kennedy’s role in the inquiry could see the case quashed.

The so-called “Tarnac affair” erupted in November 2008 when 100 French police raided the tiny rural village of Tarnac, arresting anti-capitalists running a communal farm and village shop.

The government of then President Nicolas Sarkozy alleged they were dangerous “anarcho-terrorists” hoping to overthrow the state.

French sociology graduate Julien Coupat was accused of being the group’s “ringleader” and author of a seminal work, The Coming Insurrection.

It has now emerged that British police helped French prosecutors build a case against the campaigners by confirming Mr Coupat’s presence at two activists’ meetings in France and one in New York. In one of them, it said, “the making of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) was both discussed and practised”.

…

By Henry Samuel, Paris

7:17PM GMT 08 Nov 2012

Find this story at 8 November 2012

© Copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited 2013

Pour avoir refusé de donner son ADN aux officiers de l’anti-terrorisme, Charles Torres, « le forgeron de l’affaire Tarnac », lavé de tous soupçons depuis, est passé devant la justice. Le délibéré sera rendu par le tribunal de grande instance de Rouen le 6 mars 2013.

Mercredi 6 janvier 2013, Charles Torres était jugé pour refus de se soumettre au prélèvement d’ADN. Prélèvement demandé par la cellule anti-terroriste lors d’une garde-à-vue justifiée par sa possible appartenance à l’affaire Tarnac. Au moment de cette garde-à-vue, le 23 février 2012, Charles Torres, forgeron de profession, est soupçonné d’être l’artisan des crochets qui auront servi en 2008 à saboter des caténaires de la SNCF.

Le palais de justice de Rouen accueille donc le jour de l’audience du « Forgeron de Tarnac », tous ses soutiens, sa famille et une bonne dizaine de journalistes alléchés par cette audience connexe à l’affaire Tarnac. Quelques policiers, arnaché de gilets pare-balles et de talkie-walkies. Normal, c’est le procès d’une personne qui soupçonnée début 2012 d’association de malfaiteurs dans une entreprise terroriste.

La juge aura dû, en début d’audience faire taire le public venu en nombre pour soutenir Charles Torres. Celui-ci a souhaité lire devant le tribunal « sa plaidoirie » car il n’est « pas très à l’aise à l’oral ». L’homme de 28 ans, spécialisé dans la forge médiévale, a commencé son diatribe timidement, posant la question qui le taraude : « Pourquoi suis-je ici devant vous aujourd’hui ? Je ne le sais pas, personne ne le sait. À part peut-être, l’officier de la DCRI que j’ai vu arpenter ce tribunal aujourd’hui, avec une veste de moto. »

Le forgeron a eu à cœur de pousser les traits d’ironie, malgré sa gêne à parler publiquement. Il s’est même retourné une fois vers l’assemblée pour chercher du regard un soutien. « Adressez-vous au tribunal », le reprendra la juge. Après avoir raconté sa garde à vue, Charles Torres, cultivé et aux mots littéraires, donne ses hypothèses sur les raisons de sa présence devant le tribunal, s’appuyant sur sa connaissance du droit, de l’histoire et sa culture politique. « Dans refus de se soumettre au prélèvement biologique, il y a refus de se soumettre », commence-t-il, « On incrimine ici ma volonté. »

Le forgeron de Roncherolles-sur-le-Vivier explique ensuite pourquoi il s’est refusé à ce prélèvement d’ADN : « Je m’oppose au fichage génétique. » Il rappelle l’historique du Fichier national automatisé des empreintes génétiques (Fnaeg) initialement mis en place en 1998 pour ficher les délinquants sexuels, donc les personnes jugées coupables par la justice. Voulant prouver le ridicule de sa présence au tribunal, il se joue de l’adage « Qui vole un œuf, vole un bœuf » : « Qui vole un œuf, viole un bœuf. »

Sans désarmer, Charles Torres continue de justifier son refus de se soumettre, rappelant l’affaire Élodie Kulik, violée puis assassinée (2002). En 2011, les gendarmes parviennent à confondre l’un de ses agresseurs grâce à l’ADN de son père déjà fiché. Le forgeron s’appuiera sur ce détournement du Fnaeg : « Aujourd’hui, donner mon ADN, c’est donner celui de mon frère jumeau, mes parents et mes descendants ». Il conclut : « L’ADN est un instrument de contrôle. » Ce quart d’heure de discours est applaudi par l’assemblée.

Contre Charles Torres, le procureur a requis une peine « d’avertissement » : un mois de prison avec sursis. Ce qui ne suffit évidemment pas à Me William Bourdon et Me Marie Dosé, avocats de la défense. Ils s’appuient sur la pauvreté du dossier entre les mains du tribunal de Rouen. « Le tribunal de grande instance de Nanterre vous a confié un dossier de misère. Ce que vous savez, c’est ce que la presse vous a dit et ce nous vous disons », argumente Me Dosé.

Au dossier, quelques procès-verbaux, parfois non datés, ou des notifications de mise en garde à vue de Charles Torres. Le tribunal n’a pas accès au dossier de l’affaire Tarnac dans lequel figurent les raisons pour lesquelles le forgeron a été soumis à une garde à vue. « On vous empêche de vérifier s’il y avait des raisons plausibles pour le détenir » et donc pour lui demander son ADN.

Et Me Dosé d’avancer : « Dans la procédure Tarnac, Charles Torres n’est rien sauf les conséquences de son refus » de se soumettre au prélèvement biologique. Dans leur plaidoirie, les deux avocats du forgeron frôlent la violation de l’instruction judiciaire, sans jamais vraiment tomber dedans. « Les policiers mentent au tribunal, il n’y avait aucune raison pour le mettre en garde à vue, vous devez sanctionner cette manipulation judiciaire », reprend Me Bourdon qui considère le dossier Charles Torres comme « un vide intersidéral ».

Le tribunal rendra son délibéré le 6 mars 2013.

L’affaire du Forgeron soulève une question de constitutionnalité

Charles Torrès est jugé pour avoir refusé de donner son ADN aux policiers de l’anti-terrorisme dans le cadre de l’affaire Tarnac. Pour aller plus loin, ses avocats ont tenté de mettre en doute la constitutionnalité du prélèvement ADN à répétition et du fichage de tout un chacun. Le délibéré sera rendu le 6 mars 2013.

Le procès de Charles Torres, s’est ouvert ce mercredi 6 janvier 2013, au tribunal de grande instance de Rouen. Il est jugé pour avoir refusé de donner son ADN lors d’une garde à vue dans le cadre de l’affaire Tarnac. Ses avocats, Me William Bourdon et Me Marie Dosé, tous les deux au dossier de l’affaire Tarnac, essaieront de poser une question prioritaire de constitutionnalité (QPC).

Entrée en vigueur en 2010, la QPC permet de mettre en doute la constitutionnalité d’une loi déjà promulguée. Elle peut être posée par n’importe quel citoyen. On la pose devant un tribunal qui décide ou non de la transmettre à la cour de cassation.

Dans l’affaire de Charles Torres, ses avocats mettent en doute la constitutionnalité de l’article 706-56 du code de procédure pénal. Cet article encadre le prélèvement de l’empreinte biologique. Pour Me Bourdon, le dossier de Charles Torres, si petit et si peu extraordinaire soit-il, permettrait « d’envoyer un message puissant aux législateurs ». L’avocat remet en question l’alinéa 4 de l’article. Cet alinéa qui permet qu’en cas de refus de prélèvement, les officiers de police judiciaire peuvent récupérer l’ADN s’il est détaché du corps. « Lorsque Charles Torres refuse de se soumettre, il ne sait pas, que dans son dos, ou plutôt dans ses cheveux, on prélèvera la particule magique », plaide Me Bourdon, « S’il avait su que les policiers de la Sdat pouvaient faire cela, il aurait pu ajuster son comportement ». Ici, l’avocat pointe du doigt la faille de la loi qui peut conduire un citoyen à s’auto-incriminer sans être en mesure de se défendre.

L’avocat parle aussi « d’un cambriolage de l’enveloppe corporelle« , qui porte atteinte au droit de chaque citoyen de disposer de son corps. Enfin, pour plaider le dépôt de cette QPC, Me Bourdon pointe le « laisser-aller, la paresse » des policiers qui ne prennent pas le temps de vérifier si la personne concernée est déjà fichée qui peuvent conduire à une succession de prélèvements ADN sur un même citoyen.

Sans compter que le tribunal de Nanterre qui s’est dessaisi en 2012 de cette affaire, a omis de prévenir le tribunal de Rouen que la justice était bien en possession de l’ADN de Charles Torres… jugé pour avoir refusé de le donner.

La procureur refuse la QPC au motif que l’article 706-56 du code de procédure pénale aura déjà été jugé constitutionnel, dans sa globalité, par la cour de cassation. Le tribunal est allé dans ce sens et a refusé de transmettre la question prioritaire de constitutionnalité. Le procès de Charles Torres a donc bien eu lieu mercredi 6 février et les débats se sont donc poursuivis pour celui qui risque 15’000 euros d’amende et un an de prison ferme.

Publié par des larbins de la maison Poulaga (Zoé Lauwereys, Grand-Rouen.com, 7 février 2013)

Rencontre avec le « Forgeron » de Tarnac

Charles Torres a été « enlevé » par la police début 2012 dans le cadre de l’affaire Tarnac. Il est soupçonné, à ce moment là, d’être complice du sabotage de caténaires en 2008. Aucun fait n’aura été retenu contre lui. Pourtant, il est jugé mercredi 6 février 2013 au tribunal de grande instance de Rouen pour avoir refusé son ADN au moment de la perquisition.

Nous l’avons rencontré la veille de son procès pour refus de prélèvement génétique du 6 février 2013 au tribunal d’instance de Rouen. Avec son pull marin, ses cheveux en bataille, sa moustache et sa chevalière rehaussée d’une pierre blanche, il nous rejoint à la Conjuration des Fourneaux au 149 rue Saint-Hilaire. Le restaurant soutient Charles dans ses déboires judiciaires. Il nous raconte ces trente heures de garde à vue pendant lesquelles il a refusé de parler.

Ce matin du 23 février 2012, Charles Torres dort dans sa chambre, chez ses parents, à Roncherolles-sur-le-Vivier, près de Darnétal. À 28 ans, il y revient de temps en temps pour travailler. Son père, monteur en bronze, lui a installé dans son atelier, une forge pour qu’il puisse exercer son activité d’auto-entrepreneur forgeron. Il est 8 heures du matin quand une trentaine de policier de la sous-direction de l’anti-terrorisme (Sdat) frappe à la porte. « On a eu de la chance, il n’était pas 6 heures du matin et ils n’ont pas défoncé la porte », ironise celui que la presse surnommera le Forgeron dans l’affaire dite « de Tarnac ». Ce matin-là, les policiers de l’anti-terrorisme viennent perquisitionner. Ils pensent avoir trouvé celui qui a fabriqué les crochets en fer à béton responsables du sabotage de caténaires de la SNCF en 2008.

Pour ces faits, qui deviennent très vite l’affaire de Tarnac, dix personnes ont été mises en examen, pour « association de malfaiteurs en relation avec une entreprise terroriste » et « dégradations en réunion en relation avec une entreprise terroriste ». Les principaux accusés dans cette affaire sont Julien Coupat et sa compagne Yldune Lévy. Le rapport entre Tarnac et Charles Torres ? Ce dernier se l’explique facilement. « Je suis colocataire dans une maison, rue de Constantine, à Rouen, où plusieurs habitants, ont été mis en examen en 2008. Mais je n’étais même pas un des potes de Julien Coupat. Tarnac ce n’est même pas une bande de copains. Concrètement, on me soupçonnait d’avoir un comportement plus ou moins subversif d’un point de vue politique. » Charles avoue même ne pas connaître vraiment le dossier Tarnac, seulement ce que les mis en examen lui auront dit et ce qu’il aura lu dans les journaux. Il délivre son analyse : « Tarnac est devenu un groupe suite aux accusations. Il a fallu donner un cadre, d’où le nom. Ce qui fait que tu es dans le dossier ou pas, c’est ta place dans le scénario de la police. »

Quatre ans après le début de l’affaire de Tarnac, devenu au fil des années un bourbier judiciaire, la Sdat pense donc avoir trouvé un nouveau complice du sabotage. Ce 23 février 2012, « des flics de haut-vol » fouillent donc la maison des parents du forgeron après lui avoir signifié sa mise en garde à vue. Une garde à vue qui durera 35 heures. La perquisition aura fait beaucoup rire Charles qui avoue avoir eu « envie de plaisanter » mais s’être retenu par « peur qu’ils me prennent au premier degré ». « Ils ont fouillé toute la maison, ont retourné ma chambre, ont scruté mes bouquins, mon bureau, mes affaires de fac. Mais ils n’ont rien saisi dans ma chambre », se rappelle-t-il. « Pour prouver l’association de malfaiteurs et me lier aux mis en examen de Tarnac, ils ont saisi de vieux téléphones portables. » Rien non plus n’aura été saisi dans la forgerie, pourtant l’endroit le plus à même de receler des indices du sabotage. Et pourquoi pas quatre ans plus tard ? Charles se rappelle d’un détail qu’il raconte goguenard. « Dans la chambre de mon frère, ils ont trouvé deux cagoules trois trous. Elles avaient été utilisées pour l’enterrement de vie de garçon d’un copain », rit-il encore.

Charles Torres préférait ne pas être pris en photo.

La perquisition terminée, les policiers le menottent et l’emmènent « à 200 kilomètres/heure » à Levallois-Perret, dans les Hauts-de-Seine. Avant d’atteindre le siège de la Sdat, il rapporte avoir eu les yeux cachés par un masque de sommeil. « Là, j’ai senti que l’on descendait de cinq étages sous terre. Arrivés dans les locaux, on est passés de sas de sécurité en sas de sécurité »… jusqu’à la salle de garde à vue. Pendant ces 30 heures de garde à vue, Charles refusera de répondre aux questions : « J’ai décliné mon état-civil, sinon j’ai répondu des blagues ». La meilleure solution pour quelqu’un qui ne sait pas ce qu’on lui reproche, mis à part la vague « association de malfaiteurs ». « Ils n’avaient rien pour me mettre en garde-à-vue, il n’était pas question pour moi de leur donner de quoi me mettre en examen ». L’ancien étudiant en histoire se rappelle de quelques questions posées par la police. « Ils m’ont demandé ce que je pensais de la société capitaliste marchande ou quelles étaient mes opinions politiques », évoque-t-il. En lui présentant des photos des crochets utilisés pour saboter les caténaires, on lui aura même demandé s’il les avait fabriqués. Charles répondra avec l’ironie qui lui semble chère : « Vous m’amenez le modèle et je vous fais un devis ».

En fin de garde à vue, on lui demandera de donner son ADN, justifié par « des motifs graves ou concordants » dans l’affaire pour laquelle il était entendu. Chose qu’il refusera. Par conviction. « Je n’ai pas envie de faire partie d’un fichier ADN des catégories politiques », affirme-t-il. Pour lutter contre le « flicage », il refuse aussi d’avoir un téléphone ou une carte bancaire. Ce qu’il ne sait pas, à ce moment-là, c’est que la police a pris soin de nettoyer de fond en comble la salle de garde à vue, revèle Laurent Borredon, dans Le Monde du mardi 5 février 2013 : « Ce matin-là, les policiers ont nettoyé à fond les locaux de garde à vue, à l’aide d’une solution hydroalcoolique. Le bureau et le sol. Dans quelques instants, Charles Torrès va être entendu pour la quatrième fois. Les policiers souhaitent récupérer son ADN et il faut que tout soit immaculé. » Selon Le Monde qui s’est procuré le procès-verbal de la garde à vue, Charles fait bien en sorte ce jour-là de consommer « sa brique de jus d’orange sans en utiliser la paille » puis d’en « laver soigneusement l’extérieur, de sorte à n’y laisser aucune trace biologique. » Charles aura aussi mangé sans utiliser de couverts, « directement au moyen de ses doigts », pour être sûr de ne laisser aucune trace. Les policiers récupèrent tout de même quelques cheveux sur le sol du local où il était interrogé.

L’absurde du procès du mercredi 6 février 2013 ? La justice est en possession de l’ADN de Charles Torres mais on lui reproche de ne pas avoir voulu le donner. Il risque 15’000 euros d’amende et un an de prison ferme. Sur son blog, il appelle ses soutiens à « venir rire » au TGI de Rouen à 13h30, « parce qu’on ne peut que se réjouir de chaque humiliation que l’antiterrorisme s’inflige à lui-même ».

Publié par des larbins de la maison Poulaga (Zoé Lauwereys, Grand-Rouen.com, 6 février 2013)

Tarnac : un homme jugé pour refus de donner son ADN, déjà prélevé à son insu

Les policiers de la sous-direction antiterroriste (SDAT) de la police judiciaire n’ont pas peur de la contradiction. Le 24 février 2012, à 11h15, ils ont recueilli l’ADN de Charles Torrès, 28 ans, à son insu. Puis, à 11h35, ils ont lancé une procédure contre le jeune homme gardé à vue dans le cadre de l’affaire de Tarnac pour… refus de prélèvement génétique. Charles Torrès doit être jugé, mercredi 6 février, par le tribunal correctionnel de Rouen. Il risque, au maximum, un an de prison et 15’000 euros d’amende. À la suite de sa garde à vue, il avait été relâché sans charge, mais cela n’empêche pas d’être dans l’obligation de laisser son ADN. Il suffit qu’existent des “indices graves ou concordants” contre la personne entendue, indique le code de procédure pénale.

Ce matin-là, les policiers ont nettoyé à fond les locaux de garde à vue, à l’aide d’une solution hydroalcoolique. Le bureau et le sol. Dans quelques instants, Charles Torrès va être entendu pour la quatrième fois. Les policiers souhaitent récupérer son ADN et il faut que tout soit immaculé. Les enquêteurs veulent vérifier si le jeune homme, interpellé la veille près de Rouen, n’a pas forgé les crochets qui ont servi à saboter des lignes de TGV, à l’automne 2008.

“DÉLOYAUTÉ”

Charles Torrès est aussi prudent que les policiers sont méticuleux : il a “consommé sa brique de jus d’orange sans en utiliser la paille, puis en [a] soigneusement lavé l’extérieur, de sorte à n’y laisser aucune trace biologique (…). À l’heure du déjeuner, il a été constaté qu’il mangeait sans utiliser de couverts, directement au moyen de ses doigts”, note le lieutenant de la SDAT, dans son procès-verbal, que Le Monde a pu consulter.

Mais le stratagème réussit : les hommes de la police technique et scientifique parviennent à récupérer “les prélèvements de traces de contact” là où il “a apposé ses mains”. Encore mieux, “à l’aplomb du siège où [il] s’est assis, des cheveux jonchent le sol”. Précis, le policier indique “que la présence de ces cheveux au sol résulte de la propension qu’a manifestée Charles Torrès à se passer (nerveusement) les mains dans les cheveux”. Trente heures de garde à vue dans les locaux de la SDAT, c’est un peu stressant…

Comment justifier une procédure pour refus de prélèvement d’ADN quand on vient de le recueillir ? En faisant comme si de rien n’était : le procureur qui poursuit puis les magistrats qui vont juger le dossier “ADN” n’ont accès qu’aux pièces du dossier Tarnac que la SDAT veut bien leur transmettre. Le PV de recueil de traces génétiques a été opportunément exclu. Au contraire, une enquêtrice justifie la procédure en assurant que le prélèvement demandé à Charles Torrès “aurait utilement permis de déterminer le profil génétique de l’intéressé aux fins de comparaison avec les empreintes génétiques à ce jour non identifiées”.

“Il s’agit d’un symptôme de plus de la déloyauté qui contamine tout le dossier”, estime Me William Bourdon, l’un des avocats de Charles Torrès. Il souhaite déposer une question prioritaire de constitutionnalité, mercredi. Pour lui, les articles de loi sur les prélèvements d’ADN sont “défaillants” face au principe de libre disposition de son corps : l’officier de police judiciaire n’a pas d’obligation d’informer qu’il peut y avoir un prélèvement clandestin, puis que ce prélèvement a eu lieu — ce qui interdit tout recours — et, enfin, il n’est pas obligé de vérifier que le gardé à vue est déjà fiché, avec le risque d’une multiplication des prélèvements.

Et la comparaison des empreintes génétiques ? Au final, elle n’a rien donné.

Publié par des larbins de la maison Poulaga (Laurent Borredon, LeMonde.fr, 5-6 février 2013)

Pourquoi j’ai refusé de livrer mon ADN

Le 6 février 2013, Charles Torres comparaît au tribunal de Rouen pour avoir refusé le prélèvement de son ADN lors d’une garde à vue de 35 heures début 2012. Forgeron, on le soupçonnait de complicité dans l’affaire de Tarnac et d’avoir fabriqué les crochets qui servirent à bloquer des TGV en 2008.

Le 23 février 2012, je fis bien malgré moi une entrée fracassante dans l’affaire dite « de Tarnac ». Une escouade de policiers de la Sous-Direction antiterroriste (SDAT), avec à leur tête le médiatique juge Fragnoli, vint me sortir du lit de bon matin. Bien qu’habitant la Seine-Maritime, je devins ce jour-là « le forgeron de Tarnac ». À défaut de pouvoir établir le moindre lien entre les mis en examen et les fameux crochets, le juge voulait à toute force insinuer un lien entre eux et quelqu’un qui aurait pu les fabriquer. Je fus donc, avec mon père de 86 ans, soupçonné le temps d’une garde à vue d’avoir confectionné les crochets qui servirent à bloquer des TGV une nuit de novembre 2008.

On sait que le storytelling antiterroriste ne s’embarrasse guère de la vraisemblance, et les différents articles parus dans la presse lors de mon arrestation le reproduisirent fidèlement. Il n’y eut d’ailleurs à peu près personne pour mentionner le fait que je fus libéré au bout de 35 heures sans la moindre charge ; et ni le juge ni les policiers ne me présentèrent leurs excuses pour m’avoir ainsi kidnappé sans raison valable. Faute d’excuses, je pensais qu’ils auraient à cœur de se faire oublier pour ces 35 heures de séquestration légale. Sur ce point, c’est bien moi qui me suis trompé.

Comme je le précisais plus haut, des amis harcelés par l’antiterrorisme, j’en ai quelques-uns, à Rouen comme à Tarnac. Je lis la presse aussi. De ce fait, je sais comme tout un chacun que tout ce que l’on peut déclarer dans une garde à vue a vocation à être déformé et utilisé contre vous. Je réservais donc mes réponses aux questions des policiers sur mes idées politiques au juge en charge de l’enquête. Malheureusement, il ne crut pas bon de me recevoir. Quelques jours plus tard, je fis tout de même l’effort de lui écrire afin de ne laisser aucun doute quant à l’erreur manifeste que représentait mon arrestation. Le jour même où cette missive devait paraître, le juge, qui allait être dessaisi, la recouvrit de l’annonce de son autodessaisissement. Il fit ainsi d’une pierre deux coups, et la missive ne parut jamais.

Pas plus que je n’avais de raison d’être en garde à vue à Levallois-Perret, n’avais-je de raison de livrer mon ADN à la police, qui de toute façon alla le récupérer lamentablement sous la forme d’un cheveu laissé sur le sol d’une salle d’interrogatoire. Je refusai donc. Faut pas pousser.

Mais refuser de donner son ADN est un délit, en soi. C’est-à-dire que même lorsque l’on vous l’a pris malgré vous, qu’on l’a analysé, qu’il vous a dédouané et que vous êtes à l’évidence lavé des soupçons qui avaient justifié qu’on vous le demande, vous êtes encore et toujours coupable d’avoir refusé. C’est cela la loi sur l’ADN, et c’est pour cela que je comparaîtrai au tribunal de Rouen ce mercredi 6 février.

De prime abord, on pourrait penser que je suis, ici, victime de l’un des effets pervers d’une loi mal formulée et qu’il suffirait d’un peu de bon sens pour que tout rentre dans l’ordre. C’est tout le contraire que mon procès révèle.

On peut ainsi remettre en question l’efficacité de l’ADN, et la mystification qui consiste à corréler une trace souvent partielle avec un acte. On peut évoquer ce professeur d’EPS récemment accusé d’avoir tiré sur la police à Amiens car son ADN avait été retrouvé sur une arme : il avait eu le malheur de revendre sa voiture à quelqu’un du quartier insurgé longtemps auparavant. Coup de chance, il put prouver qu’il était en Bretagne la nuit des tirs. On peut avancer le cas de cette chimiste assermentée de Boston, Annie Dookhan, qui par zèle a bidonné, des années durant, ses « expertises », ce qui aboutit à la remise en cause de dizaines de milliers de condamnations dans le Massachusetts. On peut faire valoir que les traces génétiques que partout nous déposons se mêlent et s’entrelacent avec toutes celles de tous ceux que nous croisons, que nous aimons. Que l’existence est toujours collective et qu’aucune analyse génétique ne permettra jamais de décrypter le monde tel qu’il est vécu.

On peut tout autant s’indigner du fait que ce qui fut initialement vendu comme le « fichier des violeurs » comporte aujourd’hui plus de 2 millions d’identifications. On peut même tomber des nues en lisant dans Le Monde du 21 février 2012 que désormais la police, grâce à un « vide juridique », détourne les garde-fous du FNAEG pour retrouver des gens grâce à l’ADN de leurs parents (ce qui fait évidemment exploser le nombre de personnes effectivement fichées à des dizaines de millions).

…

Les invités de Mediapart, 5 février 2013

Posted on 9 février 2013 by juralib

Find this story at 9 February 2013

Auch ein UN-Gesandter kritisiert die sexualisierte Informationsbeschaffung britischer verdeckter Ermittler. Der Guardian enthüllte am Wochenende, wie die Polizisten Identitäten toter Kinder stehlen

Britische verdeckte Ermittler haben in den letzten Jahrzehnten in mindestens 80 Fällen die Identitäten gestorbener Kinder und Jugendlicher angenommen. Dies berichtete der Guardian am Wochenende. Die Spitzel bzw. deren Vorgesetzte suchten sich jene Kinder aus, deren Geburtsdatum etwa ihrem eigenen entsprach. Mit der jetzt vielfach kritisierten Praxis sollte das Auffliegen der Spitzel erschwert werden, da diese neben Geburtsdokumenten auch eine Biographie vorzeigen konnten.

Zur Ausgestaltung der falschen Identitäten unternahmen die Polizisten bisweilen Ausflüge in die frühere Umgebung der Toten, um auf etwaige Fragen antworten zu können. In keinem Fall wurden die Eltern der Kinder hiervon benachrichtigt. Die Verwandten der Gestorbenen tragen aber im Falle des Auffliegens der Spitzel ein beträchtliches Risiko, wenn etwa wütende, ausgeforschte Demonstranten bei ihnen vorstellig werden. Nach der Veröffentlichung bemühte sich die Polizei um Schadensbegrenzung: Angeblich würde der Identitätsdiebstahl nicht mehr angewandt.

Spitzel zeugen Kinder und tauchen ab

Der Skandal wirft ein weiteres Schlaglicht auf die dubiosen Methoden der britischen Polizei. Heute befasst sich der Innenausschuss des Parlaments in einer Anhörung mit Spitzeln, die mit den von ihnen ausgeforschten Ziel- oder Kontaktpersonen jahrelang emotionale Bindungen eingingen und Sexualität praktizierten. Dies hatte in der britischen Öffentlichkeit für Entsetzen gesorgt.

Elf Frauen und ein Mann brachten die Fälle letztes Jahr vor Gericht und verwiesen darauf, dass die Polizisten dabei mindestens drei Kinder gezeugt hatten (Emotionaler und sexueller Missbrauch durch Polizisten wird öffentlich). Die zwischen sieben Monaten und sechs Jahre dauernden Beziehungen endeten aber mit dem plötzlichen Abtauchen der vermeintlichen Partner, wenn deren Einsatz abgebrochen wurde. Die Klagen richten sich gegen die britische Metropolitan Police und die halbprivate “Association of Chief Police Officers”, die für die klandestinen Ermittlungen zuständig war.

Die Zivilklage betont unter anderem die Europäische Menschenrechtskonvention, die in Artikel 8 das “Recht auf Achtung des Privat- und Familienlebens” behandelt. Der zuständige Richter verglich das sexuelle Gebaren mit dem Geheimagenten James Bond, was in Großbritannien zu Debatten geführt hatte. Zwar unterstrich der traditionell gelockte Richter die Glaubwürdigkeit der Klagen, beschloss aber gleichzeitig, dass diese in Teilen nicht-öffentlich verhandelt werden. Derartige Geheimverfahren waren bislang nur für den Geheimdienst MI5 vorgesehen. Für die Klägerinnen bedeutet dies, dass sie nicht auf Einlassungen der Polizisten reagieren können.

Vom Geheimverfahren betroffen sind die Einsätze des bekannten Spitzels Mark Kennedy, der jetzt in den USA lebt. Mit seinem Kollegen, der unter dem Namen “Marco Jacobs” auftrat, unterwanderte Kennedy die linke Mobilisierung gegen den G8-Gipfel in Heiligendamm 2007 und den NATO-Gipfel in Strasbourg 2009 (Polizeispitzel belügen Staatsanwaltschaften und Gerichte).

Bundesregierung verweigert Aufklärung

Der geltungssüchtige Kennedy, der seine Spitzelei sogar in einer Doku-Fiction zu Geld machte, hatte sich letztes Jahr selbst zum Opfer erklärt: Öffentlichkeitswirksam nutzt er die Klagen der Frauen, um seinerseits Schadensersatz von seinen früheren Vorgesetzten zu fordern. Da diese ihn nicht an den sexuellen Affären und Beziehungen gehindert hätten, sollen sie ihm den dadurch entstandenen posttraumatischen Stress mit rund 120.000 Euro vergüten.

Im Januar schlug sich der UN-Berichterstatter für Versammlungsfreiheit und Vereinigung, Maina Kiai, auf die Seite der betroffenen Frauen. Der Kenianer richtete eine Protestnote an die britische Regierung, in der er eine öffentliche Untersuchung zu den Vorfällen fordert. Dies würde auch ein neues Licht auf den Spitzeltausch mit Deutschland werfen.

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Matthias Monroy

Find this story at 5 February 2013

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