Companies making use of offshore secrecy include firm that supplied surveillance software used by repressive regimes.

A number of so-called nominee directors of companies registered in the British Virgin Islands (BVI) have connections to military or intelligence activities, an investigation has revealed.

In the past, the British arms giant BAE was the most notorious user of offshore secrecy. The Guardian in 2003 revealed the firm had set up a pair of covert BVI entities.

The undeclared subsidiaries were used to distribute hundreds of millions of pounds in secret payments to get overseas arms contracts.

Today the investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and the Guardian uncovers the identities of other offshore operators.

Louthean Nelson owns the Gamma Group, a controversial computer surveillance firm employing ex-military personnel. It sells bugging technology to Middle East and south-east Asian governments.

Nelson owns a BVI offshore arm, Gamma Group International Ltd.

Gamma’s spyware, which can be used against dissidents, has turned up in the hands of both Egyptian and Bahraini state security police, although Nelson’s representative claims this happened inadvertently.

He initially denied to us that Nelson was linked to Gamma, and denied that Nelson owned the anonymous BVI affiliate.

Martin Muench, who has a 15 per cent share in the company’s German subsidiary, said he was the group’s sole press spokesman, and told us: “Louthean Nelson is not associated with any company by the name of Gamma Group International Ltd. If by chance you are referring to any other Gamma company, then the explanation is the same for each and every one of them.”

After he was confronted with evidence obtained by the ICIJ/Guardian investigation, Muench changed his position. He told us: “You are absolutely right, apparently there is a Gamma Group International Ltd.”

He added: “So in effect I was wrong – sorry. However I did not say that Louthean Nelson was not associated with any Gamma company, only the one that I thought did not exist.”

Nelson set up his BVI offshoot in 2007, using an agency, BizCorp Management Pte, located in Singapore. His spokesman claimed the BVI company was not involved in sales of Gamma’s “Finfisher” spyware. But he refused to disclose the entity’s purpose.

Earlier this year, computer researchers in California told the New York Times they had discovered Finfisher being run from servers in Singapore, Indonesia, Brunei, Mongolia and a government ministry in Turkmenistan. The spying software was previously proved to have infected the computers of political activists in Bahrain, which Louthean Nelson visited in June 2006.

The Finfisher progamme is marketed as a technique for so-called “IT intrusion”. The code disguises itself as a software update or an email attachment, which the target victim is unaware will transmit back all his or her transactions and keystrokes.

Gamma calls itself “a government contractor to state intelligence and law enforcement agencies for … high-quality surveillance vans” and telephone tapping of all kinds.

Activists’ investigations into Finfisher originally began in March 2011, after protesters who broke into Egypt’s state security headquarters discovered documents showing the bugging system was being marketed to the then president Hosni Mubarak’s regime, at a price of $353,000.

Muench said demonstration copies of the Finfisher software must have been “stolen”. He refused to identify Gamma’s customers.

Nelson’s father, Bill Nelson, is described as the CEO of the UK Gamma, which sells a range of covert surveillance equipment from a modern industrial estate outside Andover in Hampshire, near the family home in the village of Winterbourne Earls.

In September this year, the German foreign minister, Guido Westerwelle, called for an EU-wide ban on the export of such surveillance software to totalitarian states. “These regimes should not get the technical instruments to spy on their own citizens,” Westerwelle said.

The UK has now agreed that future Finfisher exports from Andover to questionable regimes will need government permission.

Other types of anonymous offshore user we have identified in this area include a south London private detective, Gerry Moore, who operated Swiss bank accounts. He did not respond to invitations to comment.

Another private intelligence agency, Ciex, was used as a postbox by the financier Julian Askin to set up a covert entity registered in the Cook Islands, called Pastech. He too did not respond to invitations to comment.

An ex-CIA officer and a South African mercenary soldier, John Walbridge and Mauritz Le Roux, used London agents to set up a series of BVI-registered companies in 2005, after obtaining bodyguarding contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Le Roux told us one of his reasons was to accommodate “local partnerships” in foreign countries. Walbridge did not respond.

A former BAE software engineer from Hull, John Cunningham, says he set up his own offshore BVI company in the hope of selling helicopter drones for purely civilian use.

Now based in Thailand, he previously designed military avionics for Britain’s Hawk and Typhoon war planes.

He told us: “That account was set up by my ‘friend’ in Indonesia who does aerial mapping with small UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles]. He was going to pay me a commission through that account … However, this was my first attempt to work in Asia and as I have found, money tends to be not forthcoming. I have never used that account.”
The military and intelligence register

Gerry Moore

Company: GM Property Developments, LHM Property Holdings

Story: South London private detective sets up BVI companies with Swiss bank accounts

Details: Moore founded “Thames Investigation Services”, later “Thames Associates”, in Blackheath, south London. He opened a Swiss bank account with UBS Basel in 1998. In 2007, he sought to open another account with Credit Suisse, Zurich, for his newly-registered BVI entity GM Property Developments. He sought to register a second offshore company, LHM Property Holdings, using his wife Linda’s initials.

Intermediary: Netincorp. BVI (Damien Fong)

Comment: No response. Thames Associates website taken down after Guardian approaches.

John Walbridge and Mauritz Le Roux

Companies: Overseas Security & Strategic Information Ltd, Remington Resources (Walbridge), Safenet UXO, Sparenberg, Gladeaway, Maplethorpe, Hawksbourne (Le Roux)

Story: Former CIA officer and South African ex-mercenary provide guards in Iraq and Afghanistan

Details: John H Walbridge Jr says he served with US special forces in Vietnam and then with the CIA in Brazil. His Miami-based private military company, OSSI Inc teamed up with South African ex-soldier and Executive Outcomes mercenary Mauritz Le Roux to win contracts in Kabul in 2005. Walbridge set up his 2 BVI entities with his wife Cassandra via a London agency in June and August 2005, and Le Roux incorporated 5 parallel BVI companies.

Intermediary: Alpha Offshore, London

Comment: Le Roux told us some of his offshore entities were kept available “in case we need to start up operations in a country where we would need to have local partnerships”. His joint venture with OSSI was based offshore in Dubai, he said, but used BVI entities ” to operate within a legal framework under British law, rather than the legal framework of the UAE”. Walbridge did not respond to invitations to comment.

Julian Askin

Company: Pastech

Story: Businessman used private intelligence agency to set up covert offshore entity in the Cook Islands

Details: Askin was a British football pools entrepreneur. He alleged Afrikaner conspiracies against him in South Africa, when his Tollgate transport group there collapsed. The apartheid regime failed to have him extradited, alleging fraud. He hired the Ciex agency to report on ABSA, the South African bank which foreclosed on him. Ciex was founded by ex-MI6 senior officer Michael Oatley along with ex-MI6 officer Hamilton Macmillan. In May 2000, they were used to help set up Pastech for their client in the obscure Pacific offshore location of Rarotonga, in the Cook Islands, with anonymous nominee directors and shareholders. Askin now lives in Semer, Suffolk.

Intermediary: Ciex, Buckingham Gate, London

Comment: He did not respond to invitations to comment.

Louthean Nelson

Company: Gamma Group International

Story: Gamma sells Finfisher round the world, spying software which infects a target’s computer.

Details: Nelson set up a UK company in 2007 on an Andover industrial estate, to make and sell Finfisher – a so-called Trojan which can remotely spy on a victim’s computer, by pretending to be a routine software update. He set up a parallel, more covert company with a similar name, registered in the BVI, via an agency in Singapore, using his father’s address at Winterbourne Earls, near Andover. He also sells to the Middle East via premises in Beirut. He ran into controversy last year when secret police in Egypt and Bahrain were alleged to have obtained Finfisher, which he denies knowingly supplying to them.

Intermediary: Bizcorp Management Pte Ltd, Singapore

Comment: His spokesman declines to say what was the purpose of the group’s BVI entity.

John Cunningham

Company: Aurilla International

Story: Military avionics software engineer from Hull with separate UK company, launches civilian venture in Indonesia

Details: Cunningham set up a BVI entity in 2007. His small UK company, On-Target Software Solutions Ltd has worked on “black boxes” for BAE Hawk and Typhoon warplanes, and does foreign consultancy. He also has interests in Thailand in a drone helicopter control system.

Intermediary: Allen & Bryans tax consultants, Singapore

Comment: Cunningham says the offshore account was never activated. “I actually make systems for civilian small UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles). I have never sold to the military. That account was set up by my ‘friend’ in Indonesia who does aerial mapping with small UAVs. He was going to pay me a commission through that account”.

By David Leigh, Harold Frayman and James Ball November 28, 2012, 2:15 pm

Find This story at 28 November 2012

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Companies making use of offshore secrecy include firm that supplied surveillance software used by repressive regimes

Bahraini protesters flee teargas. Activists’ computers in the country were infected with Finfisher spying software. Photograph: Mohammed al-Shaikh/AFP/Getty Images

A number of nominee directors of companies registered in the British Virgin Islands (BVI) have connections to military or intelligence activities, an investigation has revealed.

In the past, the British arms giant BAE was the most notorious user of offshore secrecy. The Guardian in 2003 revealed the firm had set up a pair of covert BVI entities. The undeclared subsidiaries were used to distribute hundreds of millions of pounds in secret payments to get overseas arms contracts.

Today the investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and the Guardian uncovers the identities of other offshore operators.

Louthean Nelson owns the Gamma Group, a controversial computer surveillance firm employing ex-military personnel. It sells bugging technology to Middle East and south-east Asian governments. Nelson owns a BVI offshore arm, Gamma Group International Ltd.

Gamma’s spyware, which can be used against dissidents, has turned up in the hands of Egyptian and Bahraini state security police, although Nelson’s representative claims this happened inadvertently. He initially denied to us that Nelson was linked to Gamma, and denied that Nelson owned the anonymous BVI affiliate. Martin Muench, who has a 15% share in the company’s German subsidiary, said he was the group’s sole press spokesman, and told us: “Louthean Nelson is not associated with any company by the name of Gamma Group International Ltd. If by chance you are referring to any other Gamma company, then the explanation is the same for each and every one of them.”

After he was confronted with evidence obtained by the Guardian/ICIJ investigation, Muench changed his position. He told us: “You are absolutely right, apparently there is a Gamma Group International Ltd. So in effect I was wrong – sorry. However I did not say that Louthean Nelson was not associated with any Gamma company, only the one that I thought did not exist.”

Nelson set up his BVI offshoot in 2007, using an agency, BizCorp Management Pte, located in Singapore. His spokesman claimed the BVI company was not involved in sales of Gamma’s Finfisher spyware. But he refused to disclose the entity’s purpose.

Earlier this year, computer researchers in California told the New York Times they had discovered Finfisher being run from servers in Singapore, Indonesia, Brunei, Mongolia and a government ministry in Turkmenistan. The spying software was previously proved to have infected the computers of political activists in Bahrain, which Nelson visited in June 2006.

The Finfisher programme is marketed as a technique for so-called “IT intrusion”. The code disguises itself as a software update or an email attachment, which the target victim is unaware will transmit back all his or her transactions and keystrokes. Gamma calls itself “a government contractor to state intelligence and law enforcement agencies for … high-quality surveillance vans” and telephone tapping of all kinds.

Activists’ investigations into Finfisher began in March 2011, after protesters who broke into Egypt’s state security headquarters discovered documents showing the bugging system was being marketed to the then president Hosni Mubarak’s regime, at a price of $353,000.

Muench said demonstration copies of the software must have been stolen. He refused to identify Gamma’s customers.

Nelson’s father, Bill Nelson, is described as the CEO of the UK Gamma, which sells a range of covert surveillance equipment from a modern industrial estate outside Andover, Hampshire, near the family home in the village of Winterbourne Earls, Wiltshire.

In September, the German foreign minister, Guido Westerwelle, called for an EU-wide ban on the export of such surveillance software to totalitarian states. “These regimes should not get the technical instruments to spy on their own citizens,” he said. The UK has now agreed that future Finfisher exports from Andover to questionable regimes will need government permission.

Other types of anonymous offshore user we have identified in this area include a south London private detective, Gerry Moore, who operated Swiss bank accounts. He did not respond to invitations to comment.

Another private intelligence agency, Ciex, was used as a postbox by the financier Julian Askin to set up a covert entity registered in the Cook Islands, called Pastech. He too did not respond to invitations to comment.

An ex-CIA officer and a South African mercenary soldier, John Walbridge and Mauritz Le Roux, used London agents to set up a series of BVI-registered companies in 2005, after obtaining bodyguarding contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Le Roux told us one of his reasons was to accommodate “local partnerships” in foreign countries. Walbridge did not respond.

A former BAE software engineer from Hull, John Cunningham, says he set up his own offshore BVI company in the hope of selling helicopter drones for purely civilian use. Now based in Thailand, he previously designed military avionics for Britain’s Hawk and Typhoon war planes. He told us: “That account was set up by my ‘friend’ in Indonesia who does aerial mapping with small UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles]. He was going to pay me a commission through that account … However, this was my first attempt to work in Asia and as I have found, money tends to be not forthcoming. I have never used that account.”

The military and intelligence register
Gerry Moore

Company: GM Property Developments, LHM Property Holdings Story: south London private detective sets up BVI companies with Swiss bank accounts Details: Moore founded “Thames Investigation Services”, later “Thames Associates”, in Blackheath, south London. He opened a Swiss bank account with UBS Basel in 1998. In 2007, he sought to open another account with Credit Suisse, Zurich, for his newly registered BVI entity GM Property Developments. He sought to register a second offshore company, LHM Property Holdings, using his wife Linda’s initials.

Intermediary: Netincorp. BVI (Damien Fong)

Comment: No response. Thames Associates website taken down after Guardian approaches.

John Walbridge and Mauritz le Roux

Companies: Overseas Security & Strategic Information Ltd, Remington Resources (Walbridge), Safenet UXO, Sparenberg, Gladeaway, Maplethorpe, Hawksbourne (Le Roux)

Story: former CIA officer and South African ex-mercenary provide guards in Iraq and Afghanistan Details: John H Walbridge Jr says he served with US special forces in Vietnam and then with the CIA in Brazil. His Miami-based private military company OSSI Inc teamed up with the South African ex-soldier and Executive Outcomes mercenary Mauritz le Roux to win contracts in Kabul in 2005. Walbridge set up his two BVI entities with his wife, Cassandra, via a London agency in June and August 2005, and Le Roux incorporated five parallel BVI companies.

Intermediary: Alpha Offshore, London Comment: Le Roux told us some of his offshore entities were kept available “in case we need to start up operations in a country where we would need to have local partnerships”. His joint venture with OSSI was based offshore in Dubai, he said, but used BVI entities “to operate within a legal framework under British law, rather than the legal framework of the UAE”. Walbridge did not respond to invitations to comment.

Julian Askin

Company: Pastech Story: exiled businessman used a private intelligence agency to set up covert offshore entity in the Cook Islands Details: Askin was a British football pools entrepreneur. He alleged Afrikaner conspiracies against him in South Africa, when his Tollgate transport group there collapsed. The apartheid regime failed to have him extradited, alleging fraud. He hired the Ciex agency to report on ABSA, the South African bank which foreclosed on him. Ciex was founded by the ex-MI6 senior officer Michael Oatley along with ex-MI6 officer Hamilton Macmillan. In May 2000, they were used to help set up Pastech for their client in the obscure Pacific offshore location of Rarotonga, in the Cook Islands, with anonymous nominee directors and shareholders. Askin now lives in Semer, Suffolk.

Intermediary: Ciex, Buckingham Gate, London Comment: he did not respond to invitations to comment.

Louthean Nelson

Company: Gamma Group International Story: Gamma sells Finfisher around the world, spying software which infects a target’s computer.

Details: Nelson set up a UK company in 2007 on an Andover industrial estate to make and sell Finfisher – a so-called Trojan which can remotely spy on a victim’s computer by pretending to be a routine software update. He set up a parallel, more covert company with a similar name, registered in the BVI, via an agency in Singapore, using his father’s address at Winterbourne Earls, near Andover. He also sells to the Middle East via premises in Beirut. He ran into controversy last year when secret police in Egypt and Bahrain were alleged to have obtained Finfisher, which he denies knowingly supplying to them.

Intermediary: Bizcorp Management Pte Ltd, Singapore Comment: his spokesman declines to say what was the purpose of the group’s BVI entity.

John Cunningham

Company: Aurilla International Story: military avionics software engineer from Hull with separate UK company launches civilian venture in Indonesia Details: Cunningham set up a BVI entity in 2007. His small UK company, On-Target Software Solutions Ltd, has worked on “black boxes” for BAE Hawk and Typhoon war planes, and does foreign consultancy. He also has interests in Thailand in a drone helicopter control system.

…

David Leigh
The Guardian, Wednesday 28 November 2012 19.35 GMT

Find this story at 28 November 2012

© 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

IPCC tells MPs that hundreds of officers beyond South Yorkshire force will be investigated and more documents uncovered

The police watchdog said it was getting new information from members of the public about the Hillsborough disaster. Photograph: PA

The massive scale of the inquiry by the police watchdog into the Hillsborough disaster emerged on Tuesday during evidence to parliament.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission has been given a preliminary list of names of 1,444 officers currently serving with South Yorkshire police. But the IPCC’s chief executive, Jane Furniss, told the home affairs select committee there are likely to be hundreds more officers they have to look at from up to 15 other forces who were involved in providing support. The true figure of officers being examined for their role was around 2,444.

Dame Anne Owers, the chair of the IPCC, revealed that 450,000 pages of documents needed by her team had been given back to the various authorities that owned them. The documents were uncovered and examined by the Hillsborough independent panel, which produced the damning report on the tragedy in September and led to the IPCC announcing a criminal inquiry.

But as the documents have been handed back, the IPCC, as a starting point has to gather them together again and enter them onto the Home Office large major enquiry system (Holmes) before its investigation begins. This process could take months.

Furniss told MPs that her organisation would be asking for extra resources from the home secretary to carry out the inquiry.

“The documentation is a significant challenge,” she said. “Retrieving documents that were returned to different authorities, then logging them on to the Holmes system … that will take some time.” Pressed on how long it would take, Furniss said months.

She did not reveal to the committee how the IPCC intends to input the documentation onto Holmes. The Metropolitan police has access in some major cases to Altia – a software system that scans documents into the Holmes system very quickly. According to sources, inputting the documents without this system could take significantly longer than a few months.

Since the Hillsborough independent panel reported, more documents have been uncovered, the committee heard.

The IPCC is also getting new information and allegations from members of the public, and through their engagement with the Hillsborough families.

Allegations include members of the public claiming they were prevented from making statements, or that they were bullied into withdrawing them.

“So there are new allegations coming to us as a result of us announcing what we are doing,” said Furniss.

Owers told the committee that the IPCC’s Hillsborough inquiry was into the aftermath of the tragedy – into whether there was a cover-up, why blood samples were taken, what information was released to the media.

“This is going to be a large and complex investigation,” Owers said.

The Hillsborough independent panel’s report exposed the scale of the apparent cover-up by South Yorkshire police in the aftermath of the disaster in 1989 that left 96 dead.

…

Sandra Laville, crime correspondent
The Guardian, Tuesday 13 November 2012 18.34 GMT

Find this story at 13 November 2012
© 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

“The police cannot be permitted to hide behind the cloak of secrecy, when they have been guilty of one of the most intrusive and complete invasions of privacy that can be imagined.”

The approach of the Metropolitan Police to the litigation has been obstructive from the outset, refusing to provide any substantive response to the allegations and hiding behind a ‘neither confirm nor deny’ policy about the activities of their officers. Now, to add insult to injury, following one of the most intrusive invasions of privacy imaginable, the police are attempting to strike out the women’s claim by arguing that the case should have been started in a shadowy secret court known as the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT). [1]

The IPT exists for the sole purpose of maintaining secrecy, and under its jurisdiction the case could proceed with the women denied access to and unable to challenge police evidence, and powerless to appeal the tribunal’s decisions. This will mean that neither they, nor the public will ever find out the extent of the violations of human rights and abuses of public office perpetrated by these undercover units. Thus, the women, who have suffered a totally disproportionate, unnecessary and extremely damaging invasion of their privacy, may be denied access to justice by the very legislation which was purportedly designed to protect their rights.

The public outrage at the phone hacking scandal earlier this year focused on the cynical intrusion into lives of individuals by the press and the police. Today’s hearing relates to levels of intrusion far more invasive than phone hacking, yet so far most mainstream politicians remain silent.

What little information the women have garnered indicates that for 30 years or more these undercover units had (and still have) a rolling brief to inform on political movements and keep files on individuals (simply because they are or were politically active), without investigating any specific crime, and with no apparent intention to participate in any criminal justice process.[2] As a part of this, undercover officers lied and manipulated their way into people’s lives whilst their cover officers, back-room teams and the rest of the police command structure monitored and controlled people’s private lives and relationships. In certain cases, the false identity established by the police was able to be exploited by individual officers to continue their deceit after their deployment had officially ended, seemingly with no safeguard for the women involved, even fathering children in the process.

These massive intrusions into people’s lives are reminiscent of the activities of the Stasi in East Germany and those responsible should be brought to public account. These cases are, therefore, being brought in an attempt to expose the damage done by the Metropolitan Police and to make them publicly accountable for their actions.

This is a statement from supporters of eight women who are bringing legal against the Metropolitan Police. The eight women were deceived into long term intimate relationships with undercover police officers. The Metropolitan Police has applied to have the cases heard by the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT). [1] The application will be heard at the High Court on Wednesday 21 and Thursday 22 November 2012. Read the Press Release here

NOTES FOR EDITORS:
[1] The IPT is a little known tribunal set up under section 65 of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA, 2000) to deal with claims brought under the Human Rights Act against the police and other security services.
[2] The HMIC report states that “for most undercover deployments the most intense scrutiny occurs when the evidence they have collected is presented at court. Accountability to the court therefore provides an incentive for police to implement the system of control rigorously: but in the HMIC’s view, this incentive did not exist for the NPOIU. This is because NPOIU undercover officers were deployed to develop general intelligence…rather than gathering material for the purpose of criminal prosecutions.” Source: HMIC “A review of national police units which provide intelligence on criminality associated with protest” (February 2012) p.7

Find this story at 19 November 2012

Mark Kennedy, in environmentalist mode: three of the women referred to in court had intimate relationships with him. Photograph: Guardian

Undercover police officers had long-term sexual relationships with political activists and joined them at family gatherings and on holidays to make their targets “emotionally dependent” on them, according to papers submitted to the high court.

The allegations were revealed at the start of a legal attempt by the Metropolitan police to have the claims heard in secret.

Ten women and one man have launched a legal action claiming they were conned into forming “deeply personal” relationships with the police spies.

The case is the first civil action to be brought before a court since the Guardian revealed police officers frequently slept with political campaigners as part of a spy operation over four decades.

Lawyers for the police are applying to have the cases struck out of the high court and moved to a little-known tribunal that usually deals with complaints about MI5.

The solicitor Harriet Wistrich, who is representing most of the claimants, said: “These women are suing for a gross invasion of privacy, and the Met’s response is to try and hive it off into a secret court.”

Most of the claimants had long-term and serious relationships with police spies, one lasting nearly six years. One was a man who had a close personal friendship with a police spy who ended up having a sexual relationship with his girlfriend.

The submissions also refer to the case of a woman who had a child with an undercover officer who was spying on her and who vanished from her life when the deployment came to an end.

Three of the women referred to in court had intimate relationships with Mark Kennedy, who spent seven years living as an environmental campaigner. Details of Kennedy’s deployment were made public last year after activists worked out he was a police mole.

Two other women in the case had sexual relationships with a colleague of Kennedy’s who served undercover alongside him. The police spy claimed to be a truck driver called Mark Jacobs when he infiltrated a small anarchist group in Cardiff until 2009.

As Jacobs, he had taken part in “deeply personal aspects of their lives”, even attending the funeral of one woman’s father after he died of cancer, barristers told the court in their written legal submissions.

“In doing so, he had exploited the vulnerabilities of the claimants and sought to encourage them to rely on him emotionally,” the documents added.

“Jacobs” had instigated a sexual relationship with one of the women, the court was told, while she was going out with another male activist, who is part of the legal action.

“During the course of those relationships, Jacobs purported to be a confidant, empathiser and source of close support to each of the claimants,” the barristers said.

Lawyers for the 10 women involved in the joint legal action against the Met, which had overall responsibility for the deployment of the spies, claim the deception caused their clients “serious emotional and psychiatric harm”.

They told Mr Justice Tugendhat the undercover officers had used the long-term relationships to gather intelligence on the women or for their own “personal gratification”, while pretending to support them emotionally.

They said the “grave allegations” of police misconduct raised serious questions about the “extent to which covert police powers have been and may in future be used to invade the personal, psychological and bodily integrity” of members of the public.

There is confusion over the rules governing the conduct of police spies. Senior officers have claimed it is “never acceptable” and “grossly unprofessional” for undercover officers to sleep with their targets; however, a government minister recently told parliament the tactic was permitted.

The evidence uncovered by the Guardian suggests the practice is routine. Eight of the nine undercover officers identified over the past 21 months are believed to have had intimate sexual relationships with protesters they were spying on.

Documents submitted to the court allege that Kennedy attended intimate family gatherings with all three women and joined them on holidays.

“He discouraged [them] from terminating the intimate sexual relationships,” their barristers said.

Kennedy, who was married with two children, had one relationship with an activist for two years. Another activist, who became his long-term girlfriend, was in a relationship with the police spy for six years.

…

Rob Evans and Paul Lewis
The Guardian, Wednesday 21 November 2012 13.05 GMT

Find this story at 21 November 2012

© 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

Scotland Yard has been accused of ‘trying to hide its secrets’ after appealing for a case involving female activists who were ‘conned into sexual relationships’ with undercover police officers to be heard in secret.

One man and 11 women from environmental activist groups are seeking damages from Scotland Yard for the ‘emotional trauma’ they suffered when undercover officers allegedly tricked them into having sexual relationships.

One of the women is planning to sue the Met for the financial burden of bringing up a child, now 27, fathered by an officer, it was reported.

Controversial: Scotland Yard has been accused of ‘trying to hide its secrets’ after appealing for a case involving female activists who were ‘conned into sexual relationships’ with undercover police officers to be heard in secret

But it emerged last night that the Metropolitan Police are aiming to move the case against them from the High Court to a secretive tribunal.

The Met is to appeal this week that some of the cases – which were due to be heard in the High Court – should be heard in the little-known Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) instead.

The IPT, which was established in 2000, has the power to investigate complaints about the conduct of Britain’s Intelligence Agencies, including MI5, MI6 and Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ).

But complainants who take cases to the IPT have fewer rights than in court and are not able to choose their own lawyer or cross-examine witnesses.

Most hearings are held in private, no explanation has to be given for the judgement and there is no automatic right of appeal.

The Met claims that because it’s undercover operations were authorised under the Regulation of Investigatory Power Act (Ripa), which is monitored by the IPT, the cases cannot be heard in a normal court.

Action: The cases were sparked after activists exposed Met policeman Mark Kennedy, pictured, as an undercover officer

But critics have accused the Met of covering up its ‘dirty laundry’ by trying to have the cases heard by the IPT – which has upheld fewer than 1 per cent of complaints in its history.

Jenny Jones, deputy chairwoman of City Hall’s police and crime committee, which monitors the Met, told The Times: ‘I’m very concerned about this because clearly the Met is trying to hide its dirty laundry.

‘These women deserve to have their stories told and for people to understand that what happened to them was a complete betrayal of trust.

‘There seems to be a trend of the State clearly trying to hide its secrets and that’s not acceptable.’

The cases were sparked after activists exposed Met policeman Mark Kennedy as an undercover officer, leading to the collapse of a case against people charged with planning to invade a power station.

Several women then came forward to say they had had sexual contact with him, without realising he was a policeman.

…

By Rosie Taylor and Tim Shipman

PUBLISHED: 05:26 GMT, 19 November 2012 | UPDATED: 05:29 GMT, 19 November 2012

Find this story at 19 November 2012

© Associated Newspapers Ltd

Scotland Yard has been accused of trying to “hide its dirty secrets” after it sought secret hearings for cases brought by female activists who had sexual relationships with undercover police officers.

Eleven women and one man are suing the Met for emotional trauma after claiming they were tricked into forming intimate relationships with undercover officers.

One woman claims an undercover officer fathered her child and is planning a landmark legal claim that will test whether the Met should bear some financial responsibility for the child’s upbringing.

The cases have been lodged in the High Court, but the Met argues that some cases should be heard by the Investigatory Powers Tribunal.

…

Justin Davenport, Crime Edito

Find this story at 19 November 2012

© 2012 Evening Standard Limited

BEIJING—Cruising around Beijing in a silver Jaguar with “007” in the license plate, Neil Heywood seemed to relish the air of intrigue that surrounded him.

In meetings, the British consultant hinted about his connections to Bo Xilai—the onetime Communist Party highflier—but often he would refuse to hand over a business card. He spoke Mandarin, smoked heavily and worked part time for a dealer of Aston Martin cars, the British brand driven by James Bond. Some thought him a fantasist, others a fraud.

But his contrived aura of mystery appears to have been a double bluff: He had been knowingly providing information about the Bo family to Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, known as MI6, for more than a year when he was murdered in China last November, an investigation by The Wall Street Journal has found.

The revelation is a new twist in the saga of Mr. Bo, whose wife was convicted in August of poisoning Mr. Heywood in his hotel room in the southwestern city of Chongqing, where Mr. Bo was then party chief. The downfall of one of the party’s most powerful families threw into turmoil China’s plans for a once-a-decade leadership transition, due to start at the 18th Party Congress opening Thursday, and raised questions about corruption, abuse of power and bitter personal rivalries within China’s political elite.

The Journal investigation, based on interviews with current and former British officials and close friends of the murdered Briton, found that a person Mr. Heywood met in 2009 later acknowledged being an MI6 officer to him. Mr. Heywood subsequently met that person regularly in China and continued to provide information on Mr. Bo’s private affairs.

China regards the private lives of its leaders as state secrets, and information about them and their families is prized by foreign governments trying to understand the inner workings of an opaque political system.
China’s Leadership Change

See an interactive guide to China’s 18th Communist Party Congress, read more about the outgoing leaders and some candidates for promotion.

View Interactive

The Chongqing Drama

See key dates in the death of Neil Heywood in Chongqing and the drama surrounding Bo Xilai.

View Interactive

Players in China’s Leadership Purge

Read more about the players in the case.

View Interactive

More photos and interactive graphics

British authorities have sought to quell speculation that Mr. Heywood was a spy ever since the Journal reported in March that he had been working occasionally in China for a London-based business-intelligence company founded by a former MI6 officer and staffed by many former spies.

William Hague, the British foreign secretary who oversees MI6, broke with standard policy of not commenting on intelligence matters and issued a statement in April saying Mr. Heywood, who was 41 when he died, was “not an employee of the British government in any capacity.”

That was technically true, according to people familiar with the matter. They said Mr. Heywood wasn’t an MI6 officer, wasn’t paid and was “never in receipt of tasking”—meaning he never was given a specific mission to carry out or asked to seek a particular piece of information.
The Fall of Bo Xilai

Earlier coverage from The Wall Street Journal:
Crash Puts New Focus on China Leaders
Amid China Scandal, Spy Game Unraveled
In Elite China Circle, Briton Feared for His Life
U.K. Seeks Probe Into China Death
China in Transition: Full Coverage

But he was a willful and knowing informant, and his MI6 contact once described him as “useful” to a former colleague. “A little goes a long way,” the former colleague recalls the contact saying in relation to intelligence reports based on Mr. Heywood’s information.

Mr. Heywood’s intelligence links cast new light on the response to his death from British authorities, who initially accepted the local police’s conclusion that he died from “excessive alcohol consumption” and didn’t try to prevent his body from being quickly cremated without an autopsy. The British government didn’t ask China for an investigation until Feb. 15—a week after a former Chongqing police chief, Wang Lijun, fled to a U.S. consulate in China and told U.S. diplomats that Mr. Bo’s wife, Gu Kailai, had murdered the Briton.

There could be implications, too, for Chinese authorities, who would be guilty of a major security breach if they were unaware that MI6 had a source inside the inner family circle of a member of the Politburo—the party’s top 25 leaders—according to people familiar with the matter. If China’s security services were aware of Mr. Heywood’s contacts with MI6, they likely had him under surveillance during his final visit to Chongqing, those people said.

Until the scandal broke, Mr. Bo was a front-runner for promotion to the Politburo Standing Committee—the party’s top decision-making body—in this year’s leadership change.

Mr. Bo, sacked from the Politburo in April, is now facing criminal charges after Chinese authorities accused him in September of a series of offenses, including bribe-taking and interference in the murder investigation into his wife.

Neither Chinese nor British officials have suggested Mr. Heywood was killed because of his MI6 links. A Chinese court found Ms. Gu guilty in August of killing him because she thought he threatened her son over a business dispute, according to the state-run Xinhua news agency.

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Zuma Press

Gu Kailai, wife of disgraced Chinese politician Bo Xilai, on trial in August for Mr. Heywood’s murder.

However, friends of Mr. Heywood and prominent Chinese figures have pointed out omissions, ambiguities and inconsistencies in the official account of his killing presented by state media.

And when Mr. Wang fled to the U.S. consulate in Chengdu on Feb. 6, he told U.S. diplomats there that Ms. Gu had confessed to him that she “killed a spy,” according to one person who has seen a transcript of what Mr. Wang said.

A spokesman for Britain’s Foreign Office declined to comment on what was said in the U.S. consulate, and, when asked about Mr. Heywood’s relationship with MI6, referred back to Mr. Hague’s statement in April.

Asked whether Mr. Heywood had been knowingly passing information to an MI6 officer, without being a government employee, the spokesman said: “We do not comment on intelligence matters or allegations of intelligence matters.” Mr. Heywood’s MI6 contact declined to comment.

Former intelligence officials say most informants and agents in the field aren’t considered employees because they rarely have a contract and aren’t necessarily paid, but people are usually registered as “knowing” sources and assigned a code name if they are providing information to someone who has acknowledged being an MI6 officer.

Mr. Heywood’s Chinese wife, Lulu, declined to comment. His mother and sister didn’t respond to requests for comment through an intermediary. China’s Foreign Ministry didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Mr. Heywood was a potentially risky choice as an informant, not least because of the 007 license plate on his Jaguar. He was, on the other hand, an old-fashioned patriot with a taste for adventure. He was in the rare position of having regular contact with the family of a Politburo member as well as intimate knowledge of their private affairs, according to several of his closest friends. Ms. Gu was godmother to his daughter, Olivia, according to one close friend.

He got to know the family in the 1990s while living in the northeastern city of Dalian, where Mr. Bo was mayor at the time, according to several of his friends, and had become part of an “inner circle” of friends and advisers.

Mr. Heywood kept a low profile in the expatriate community, according to people who knew him, using his connections in China to build a modest freelance consultancy business advising companies and individuals on how to navigate Chinese politics and bureaucracy.

He had dealings with several British companies and politicians, including at least two members of Britain’s House of Lords—the upper house of Parliament. One of those peers met Mr. Heywood several times in the company of his MI6 contact, according to people familiar with the matter.

In the last two years of his life, Mr. Heywood’s relationship with the Bo family deteriorated, especially after Ms. Gu became convinced she had been betrayed by a member of her “inner circle” and demanded that Mr. Heywood divorce his wife and swear an oath of allegiance to Ms. Gu, according to friends of Mr. Heywood.

Mr. Heywood informed his contact of this, according to people familiar with the matter. The contact warned him at one point that he should be careful not to become “a headline,” but continued meeting him and filing confidential reports on those meetings, according to those people.

Mr. Heywood hadn’t seen Mr. Bo for more than a year when he died and had been making plans to leave China, but he appeared to be trying to persuade the Bo family to pay him money he felt he was owed, according to close friends. They said he seemed stressed and increasingly concerned that his emails and phone calls were being monitored. He also had put on weight and begun to smoke more heavily.

“He definitely felt that he should have got more out of the relationship” with the Bo family, said one close friend. “That may explain why he agreed to go to Chongqing that last time. I think he was still hoping to get what he thought he was owed.”

Mr. Heywood flew to Chongqing on Nov. 13 after being summoned at short notice to a meeting with the Bo family, according to Xinhua. He believed he was “in trouble,” according to one friend he contacted that day.

He was murdered that night in his hotel room. According to an official account of Ms. Gu’s trial from Xinhua, she poured potassium cyanide in his mouth after he vomited from drunkenness and asked for a drink of water.

The Foreign Office said that no British officials, including MI6 officers, were in contact with him in the 48 hours before his death, but declined to comment on when and how it became aware of his relationship with the Bo family and that he had been summoned to Chongqing to meet them.

Mr. Heywood’s body was found on Nov. 15, and the British consulate was informed by local authorities the next day, according to a statement by Mr. Hague to Parliament.

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Reuters

Mr. Heywood’s body was found last Nov. 15 at the Nanshan Lijing Holiday Hotel, and Ms. Gu was subsequently convicted of fatally poisoning him.

Chongqing authorities initially told Mr. Heywood’s wife, who had traveled to Chongqing, that he had died of a heart attack, while informing the consulate that he died of “excessive alcohol consumption,” according to British officials. They said the body was cremated on Nov. 18 without an autopsy, but with the permission of Mr. Heywood’s wife.

British consular officials formally expressed to their superiors their concern and suspicion about how Chinese authorities handled Mr. Heywood’s death, but other British officials believed that asking for an investigation would be problematic, according to people with knowledge of the events.

The British officials who initially handled Mr. Heywood’s death are unlikely to have known about his MI6 links or his connection to the Bo family, these people said, but intelligence officials in Beijing and London would have been aware at the time of his death, or made aware soon after.

Britain’s Foreign Office says it had no reason to suspect foul play until members of the British community began raising suspicions on Jan. 18. But the Foreign Office didn’t raise the matter with Chinese authorities until almost a month later—after Mr. Wang’s flight to the U.S. consulate in Chengdu.

U.S. officials informed British authorities about Mr. Wang’s allegations while he was still in the consulate on Feb. 7, according to the Foreign Office. It also told the Journal that a British diplomat was sent to Chengdu to try to meet Mr. Wang, but arrived after he had left the consulate.

Mr. Hague has said that the British Embassy first asked the Chinese central government to investigate Mr. Heywood’s death on Feb. 15. But British authorities didn’t make that public until more than a month later—a delay that confused some U.S. officials following the matter.

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Getty Images

Two British diplomats outside the Hefei Intermediate People’s Court in Anhui, China, where Gu Kailai was tried for Mr. Heywood’s murder.

“We couldn’t understand what the British were waiting for,” said one U.S. official who was unaware of any links between Mr. Heywood and MI6.

…

Write to Jeremy Page at jeremy.page@wsj.com

Updated November 6, 2012, 4:47 a.m. ET

Find this story at 6 November 2011

Copyright ©2012 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved

An investigation by The Wall Street Journal has concluded that Neil Heywood, the British businessman who was murdered in China last November, was an active informant for British intelligence at the time of his death. The news appears to confirm intelNews’ assessment of April 2012 that Heywood was in fact connected with British intelligence. A highly successful financial consultant and fluent Chinese speaker who had lived in China for over a decade, Heywood was found dead on November 14, 2011, in his room at the Nanshan Lijing Holiday Hotel in Chongqing. His death led to the dramatic downfall of Bo Xilai and Gu Kailai, a husband-and-wife team of political celebrities who were found guilty in a Chinese court of killing the British businessman. Immediately after Heywood’s death, there was widespread speculation that he may have been a spy for MI6, Britain’s external intelligence service. On April 27, 2012, I argued that I was not aware of anyone “with serious knowledge of intelligence issues who was not completely certain, or did not deeply suspect, that Heywood had indeed collaborated with British intelligence at some stage during the past decade”. I wrote this in the face of an official denial by British Foreign Secretary William Hague, who had said earlier in the week that “Heywood was not an employee of the British government in any capacity”. Now an extensive investigation by The Wall Street Journal has concluded that the dead British businessman had been an MI6 operative “for more than a year” prior to his death. The paper said it concluded that based on several interviews with unnamed “current and former British officials” as well as with close friends of the murdered man. One source told The Journal that Heywood had been willingly and consciously recruited by an MI6 officer, who met with him on a regular basis in China. Heywood allegedly provided the MI6 officer with inside information on Xilai and other senior Chinese government officials. The article quotes an unnamed British official as saying that Heywood’s MI6 handler once described him as “useful” to a former colleague. According to the paper, Heywood’s MI6 work does not technically contradict the British Foreign secretary’s statement that the late businessman had not been “an employee of the British government”.

…

November 7, 2012 by Joseph Fitsanakis 8 Comments

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |

Find this story at 7 November 2012

Files from the Security Service (MI5) released to The National Archives today include the personal post-war diaries of Guy Liddell, then Deputy Director General of MI5.

Liddell’s diaries cover the period 1945 to 1953 and provide a fascinating new insight into the early Cold War era. Daily entries record Liddell’s impressions of key moments including the discovery in 1949 that the Soviet Union had tested its first atomic bomb, the uncovering of the spy Klaus Fuchs and the defection of Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean.

During the Second World War, Liddell had been head of counter-espionage, and his wartime diaries were released to The National Archives in 2002 (KV 4/185-196).

This 29th release of Security Service records contains 77 files and brings the total number of Security Service records in the KV series at The National Archives to 5,003.

Liddell’s diaries are available to view online and will be free to download for one month. Professor Christopher Andrew, author of The Defence of the Realm: The Authorized History of MI5, has recorded a podcast about the new files.
Highlights

Other highlights from this release, available to view at Kew, include:
A ten-volume file on one of Britain’s leading Communist journalists, Sam Lesser, which covers his career from his time as a volunteer with the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War to becoming the Daily Worker’s foreign correspondent and foreign editor at the height of the Cold War in the early 1960s (KV 2/3741-KV 2/3750)
Austro-German Prince Hubertus Lowenstein came to Britain after Hitler took power in Germany. An active, if eccentric, anti-Nazi he was anxious to build a Germany free from National Socialism and his personal ambition was said to be no less than the German throne (KV 2/3716)
Catholic priest Henry Borynski served in a largely Polish parish in Bradford in the early 1950s before his sudden and unexplained disappearance in 1953. There was initial speculation that he had been ‘kidnapped by Red Agents and taken behind the Iron Curtain’ but the case remains unsolved (KV 2/3722-KV 2/3724)

Find this story at 26 October 2012

LONDON — Overstaffed, overconfident and all too often over here.

That’s how a top British spymaster saw his American counterparts at the FBI and CIA, according to newly declassified diaries from the years after World War II.

Friction between British spies and their American colleagues is a recurring theme in journals kept by Guy Liddell, the postwar deputy director of Britain’s domestic intelligence agency, MI5.

The diaries, published for the first time Friday by Britain’s National Archives, show Liddell was frustrated by FBI boss J. Edgar Hoover — “a cross between a political gangster and a prima donna” — and skeptical of the brand-new U.S. espionage service, the CIA.

“In the course of time … they may produce something of value,” Liddell wrote of the CIA in September 1947 after a meeting with its deputy director, Edwin Kennedy Wright.

“There is a great deal of ‘dissemination, evaluation and coordination,’ but of course the thing that really matters is whether they have anything that is worth disseminating, evaluating, or coordinating,” Liddell said.

Liddell also noted that Wright had told British intelligence officials that “in an American organization 500 people were employed to do what 50 people would do over here.”

Archives historian Stephen Twigge said the transatlantic relationship was marked by “a certain friction towards what the British might think of as the Johnny-come-latelies in the CIA.”

Britain and the U.S. were staunch wartime and Cold War allies, but the intelligence-sharing relationship was sometimes troubled. It reached a low ebb after the conviction in 1950 of Klaus Fuchs, a German-British nuclear scientist charged with passing atomic weapons secrets to the Soviet Union.

Hoover, outraged by the security lapse and angered that Britain would not let the Americans interview Fuchs in prison, threatened to cut off intelligence cooperation.

Liddell accused Hoover of “unscrupulous” behavior.

“Hoover, finding himself in something of a jam, is obviously taking British security for a ride … Hoover’s next move was to go before some other committee and say that the British made a muck of the Fuchs case,” he wrote.

Liddell called the American attitude “wholly wrong, stupid and unreasonable.”

“It merely shows how utterly incapable they are of seeing anybody’s point of view except their own, and that they are quite ready to cut off their noses to spite their faces!”

Twigge, however, said the Americans had a point — “half the British secret service turns out to have been penetrated by Soviet intelligence.”

The diaries cover a dark period for British intelligence, during which several senior agents were exposed as Soviet spies. Liddell was tainted by his friendship with Guy Burgess, one of the “Cambridge Spies” secretly working for the Russians.

The diaries show that Liddell doubted Burgess’ guilt. “My own view was that Guy Burgess was not the sort of person who would deliberately pass confidential information to unauthorized parties,” he wrote in 1950.

Liddell was shaken by the disappearance of Burgess and Donald Maclean, who defected to Moscow in 1951, and was himself questioned as a possible double agent. He retired from MI5 in 1953 and died of heart failure in 1958.

“As time has gone on it’s pretty apparent he wasn’t a Soviet agent,” Twigge said. “Just unlucky in his friends.”

A previous installment of Liddell’s diaries, covering World War II, was declassified in 2002.

The new volumes reveal the life of a postwar spymaster to be extremely varied. Liddell attended the Nuremberg trials of senior Nazis, where he saw figures including Hermann Goering — “one of the few who had much spunk left in him” — and Rudolf Hess, who “appeared to be entirely indifferent to the proceedings.”

Another entry recorded a briefing about a UFO sighting, of which Liddell was skeptical.

…

By Associated Press, Published: October 25

Find this story at 25 October 2012

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

© The Washington Post Company

Caretakers and community workers are the way to improve safety in deprived communities, not more technology

Not long ago, I was shown around an award-winning housing estate in east London, which was the proud recipient of a Secured by Design (SBD) award. The housing on the gated estate had small windows, reinforced steel doors and grey, aluminium, military-style roofs. The overall effect was oppressive.

High levels of security have come to characterise our public buildings. This is because security has become a prerequisite of planning permission as a result of SBD, which is a design policy that has the blessing of the police. Administered by the Association of Chief Police Officers, SBD is funded by the 480 security companies that sell the goods needed to meet the required standards. The unintended effects that this approach has had on fear and trust in communities are the subject of my forthcoming report, Fortress Britain, from the New Economics Foundation thinktank.

SBD has its roots in the idea of “defensible space”, created by the American architect and town planner Oscar Newman in the early 1970s, as a result of research he carried out in three deprived New York housing projects. His main finding was that “territoriality” created space that could defend itself. By marking out boundaries clearly, residents would feel a sense of ownership over communal spaces and would discourage strangers and opportunistic criminals from entering.

Newman’s considerable influence led to the adoption of Crime Prevention through Environmental Design in the US, the design policy that was imported as SBD into Britain, where it began life as a regional crime reduction initiative in the late 1980s.

Both in the US and in Britain the idea of defensible space was very popular because it provided a simple solution: rather than engaging with complex social relations as the underlying causes of crime, SBD promoted the idea that environmental design was the biggest influence on behaviour.

Today, SBD is based on a combination of defensible space ideas and the purchase of security products, strongly backed by the insurance industry, which provides lower premiums for properties with SBD.

Many of the recommendations, such as the need to provide good locks on windows and doors, are sensible. But the blanket application of SBD standards tends to create a threatening environment, particularly in poorer areas.

For example, in schools and public buildings the first step of SBD is a crime risk assessment, which is about the local area. While high fences, walls or other barriers are a prerequisite for any school, the crime risk assessment will suggest whether additional security measures are necessary. This means that in higher crime areas security is much greater, creating places that have a militarised feel to them. Because higher crime areas tend to be poor, deprived neighbourhoods have become characterised by public buildings, such as council offices, that come with fortress-like levels of security.

Lack of evidence

One of the main reasons for this report was the lack of evidence that installing gates and CCTV created safe, cohesive and trusting communities. Of the few existing studies, an investigation into CCTV by the then Scottish Office found that, while people often believed CCTV would make them feel safer, the opposite turned out to be the case.

My report, which includes a field study carried out on a Peabody Trust housing estate in central London, hopes to add to this slim body of research. Interviews and focus groups were carried out with residents and practitioners working in neighbourhood management, estate services and youth services on Peabody Avenue, an estate where 55 new homes have recently been completed.

What we found independently was that, although increased security, and in particular CCTV, was often very popular with residents, it did not necessarily lead to feelings of increased safety, with residents reporting that the presence of CCTV could instead increase anxiety.

Security measures including gates and internal doors elicited a similar response, with residents illustrating that “defensible space” can increase fear of strangers. “Because of the doors, if you see someone you don’t know, there is an element of ‘Who is this?'” one resident commented. A practitioner added: “The more you secure a block or an estate, the more it gives a message that something is wrong with that estate.”

Incidents of actual crime were barely mentioned. By far the biggest problem was young people hanging around late into the night in the courtyard of the estate, which is surrounded by housing. On a number of occasions the play area had been vandalised. Because the young people in question were either residents or friends of residents, barring access to the estate through the use of gates did not seem sensible. The study suggested that high security was offered as a technical response to a complex social problem, which required a different kind of solution. It was clear that residents felt that “knowing people”, whether it be caretakers, youth workers or each other, was the key to creating trust.

“The physical security measures – such as gating, intercom systems, CCTV – have increased, and the eyes on the ground have been removed. There’s more CCTV, less manpower,” said one practitioner.

…

• Fortress Britain: high security, insecurity and the challenge of preventing harm, by Anna Minton and Jody Aked. Anna Minton is the 1851 Royal Commission in the Built Environment fellow. She is on Radio 4’s Four Thought at 8.45pm on Wednesday

Anna Minton
The Guardian, Tuesday 30 October 2012 17.00 GMT

Find this story at 30 October 2012

© 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

Closed circuit television camera systems in town and city centres have failed to match their anti-crime expectations, according to a report.

Professor James Ditton, of the Scottish Centre for Criminology, says the cameras have not lived up to their early promise.

After four years of monitoring the monitors, the professor, who led a Scottish Office study into CCTV, has called for an independent watchdog to oversee the use of the technology.

The centre of Glasgow alone is screened day and night by 32 cameras.

“It has been overhyped and I think that is one of the problems,” Prof Ditton told BBC Scotland. “It was allegedly going to give us these magnificent benefits of reducing crime and making the fear of crime diminish to almost nothing.

“Although it probably does have some utility for the police it does not have these wonderful great societal benefits, so we really question whether the benefits it does bring us justify photographing everybody who goes into the city everyday.”

He argued that since the Glasgow cameras were switched on in 1994 crime had fallen more sharply elsewhere than under their gaze.

He said street surveys had shown people do not feel any safer now.

Professor Ditton also said the cameras had not proved cost effective, producing just one arrest every 40 days.

“We were very surprised by the findings. We had done some previous research in Airdrie where CCTV started in Scotland and where we found there was quite a significant fall in crime after the installation of the cameras,” he said.

“To be honest, we expected to find the same in the Glasgow and we were very surprised to find it didn’t really happen.”

The report said there had been no sign of the investment, jobs or visitors it was promised the cameras would generate.

But because CCTV systems are spreading across the country and some have a wide focus, the professor is advocating the creation of an independent watchdog to monitor the way the cameras are used.

‘Vastly overhyped

He said people may begin to question whether they want the police secretly to tape them in public.

“The cameras were so vastly overhyped as a magic bullet cure for everything when they were introduced, that we were all blinded to the fact that this was a small addition in police terms, but a rather large incursion in civil liberty terms,” said Professor Ditton.

Edinburgh city centre CCTV operator Gary Ogilvie responded to the report by insisting on the benefits of the system.

Mr Ogilvie said: “The cameras can cover large areas very quickly.

“We are identifying things which we can get the police travelling to quickly.

“In Edinburgh we have an excellent relationship with the police and we get very good response times.

“This is something the business community in Edinburgh has commented upon – that response times to incidents since CCTV went in have been much improved,” he added.

But a Scottish Executive spokesman said while the government was disappointed with the figures in the research, it still believed CCTV made a significant contribution to cutting crime.

“The Scottish Executive believes that the majority of CCTV schemes help to prevent crime and allay public concerns,” he said.

CCTV ‘fails to cut crime and anxiety’
Doubts on £170m extension plan

Gerard Seenan, Guardian, 15/7/99

Closed circuit television cameras, one of the government’s key weapons in the war against crime, neither reduce crime nor the fear of it, according to one of the most comprehensive investigations carried out on the subject.

A report prepared for the Scottish office concludes that CCTV has not succeeded in making the streets safer or in making people feel safer.

The results follow similar conclusions by researchers in Wales last week, and cast doubt on the government’s decision to spend £170m extending CCTV across Britain.

The research, carried out over a two year period in Glasgow, reveals that in the first year after CCTV was introduced crime rose in the city by 9%. The crime clear-up rate dropped by 4% over the same period.

Jason Ditton, professor of criminology at Sheffield university, who led the research, said he believed the results should open up debate on CCTV and how it was regulated.

“What we have been able to show is that CCTV didn’t reduce crime – if anything it has increased – and it didn’t reduce fear of crime. If anything there was a slight increase in anxiety.”

The researchers surveyed Glaswegians before the CCTV system was set up and found that most said they would feel safer if their city was protected by CCTV.

But after one year of operation, most said they did not feel any safer, and more people said they would avoid the city centre.

Simon Davies, director of the pressure group Privacy International, said the research should prompt a fresh look at the use of CCTV in Britain.

“The claim that people feel safer because of the technology has been clearly shown to be misleading;’ Mr Davies said.

A spokeswoman for the home office said the government had never claimed CCTV was a panacea, but it still had great faith in its usefulness.

The Scottish executive, which received the report, said it would still continue with its expansion of CCTV in Scotland.

“The effect of Closed Circuit Television on recorded crime rates and public concern about crime rates in Glasgow” by Prof. Jason Ditton is published by the Scottish Office, ISBN 07480 85416.

Find this story at 14 July 1999

BBC Online, Wednesday, July 14, 1999 Published at 12:52 GMT 13:52 UK

Yunus Rahmatullah has been imprisoned since he was handed by the SAS to US forces in 2004, but has never been charged

Undated Reprieve handout photo of Yunus Rahmatullah. Photograph: Reprieve/PA

Human rights campaigners have called for a full criminal investigation into the rendition of a Pakistani man by UK and US forces to Afghanistan, following a supreme court judgment describing his subsequent detention at the notorious US prison at Bagram as unlawful. Yunus Rahmatullah has been imprisoned ever since he was handed over by the SAS to American forces in Iraq in 2004, and has never been charged.

Lawyers for the man argued before the UK’s highest court that the government should apply pressure on the US to release him. The court of appeal had previously issued a writ of habeas corpus – an ancient law that demands a prisoner is released from unlawful detention – requiring the UK to seek Rahmatullah’s return or at least demonstrate why it could not. However, the US authorities refused to cooperate, arguing that they would discuss Rahmatullah’s situation with the Pakistani government.

Lawyers for William Hague and Philip Hammond, the foreign and defence secretaries, had argued that they had no power “to direct the US” to release him and that it would be inappropriate for the courts to instruct them to ask the US authorities to return Rahmatullah.

Rejecting this argument, a panel of seven supreme court judges ruled that the UK did not need to have actual custody to exercise control over his release. The UK’s most senior judges also declared that there was clear evidence that Rahmatullah’s rendition and detention was a breach of international human rights law, despite “memorandums of understanding” Britain had agreed with the US over treatment of detainees.

Lord Kerr said: “The, presumably forcible, transfer of Mr Rahmatullah from Iraq to Afghanistan is, at least prima facie, a breach of article 49 [of the fourth Geneva Convention]. On that account alone, his continued detention post-transfer is unlawful.”

Kerr also said that he would have “little hesitation in dismissing” arguments from former US assistant attorney general Jack Goldsmith asserting that al-Qaida operatives found in occupied Iraq were excluded from protection under the Geneva Conventions during armed conflict.

However, the court was split 5-2 in a decision to reject arguments by Rahmatullah’s lawyers that there was more that the UK government could do following the American’s refusal to respond to the habeas corpus writ. Rahmatullah was represented by legal charity Reprieve and solicitors Leigh Day, who argued that the UK should have made more effort to demand his release.

In a dissenting judgment, Lady Hale and Lord Carnwath said: “Where liberty is at stake, it is not the court’s job to speculate as to the political sensitivities which may be in play.”

Reprieve’s director, Clive Stafford Smith, said: “This powerful supreme court decision has huge ramifications. Clearly there will now have to be a full criminal investigation. But if the US has ‘dishonoured’ its commitment to the UK in this case for the first time in 150 years, and continues to violate law as basic as the Geneva conventions, this also throws other extradition agreements with the UK into doubt.”

Reprieve’s legal director, Kat Craig, added: “The UK government has nowhere left to turn. The highest court in the country has expressed serious concerns that grave war crimes may have been committed as a result of which a police investigation must be initiated without delay.”

Yunus Rahmatullah and Amanatullah Ali, both Pakistani men, are suspected of having travelled to Iraq to fight for al-Qaida. MI6 is understood to have tracked them as they travelled across Iran and into Iraq early in 2004. After they settled into a house in southern Baghdad a decision was taken to raid the building.

…

Maya Wolfe-Robinson and Ian Cobain
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 31 October 2012 14.59 GMT

Find this story at 31 October 2012

© 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

Chris Kitchen calls for IPCC to widen investigation into alleged cover-up over framing of 95 picketing miners in 1984 strikes

A picket injured during clashes with police at the Orgreave plant in 1984. The NUM is calling for investigations into South Yorkshire police cover-ups over framing of miners. Photograph: PA Archive/Press Association Ima

The police complaints watchdog is under pressure to widen its investigation into alleged fabrication of evidence by South Yorkshire officers in the 1980s as new allegations emerge of attempts to frame miners at the Orgreave coking plant clashes.

Chris Kitchen, general secretary of the National Union of Mineworkers, said the Independent Police Complaints Commission and the director of public prosecutions, Keir Starmer QC, should include in their examination of South Yorkshire police’s post-Hillsborough “cover-up” the force’s alleged framing of 95 miners for serious criminal offences after Orgreave.

“Many miners were subjected to malpractice during the strike by South Yorkshire police – and other forces,” Kitchen told the Guardian. “I will be asking the NUM’s national executive committee to consider complaining to the IPCC and DPP for the police operations at Orgreave and elsewhere during the strike to be investigated, now the details of what South Yorkshire police did at Hillsborough have been revealed.”

At Orgreave in 1984, police officers on horseback and on foot were filmed beating picketing miners with truncheons, but South Yorkshire police claimed the miners had attacked them first, and prosecuted 95 men for riot and unlawful assembly, which carried potential life sentences. All 95 were acquitted after the prosecution case collapsed following revelations in court that police officers’ statements had been dictated to them in order to establish evidence of a riot, and one officer’s signature on a statement had been forged.

On Monday night, a BBC1 Inside Out documentary, to be broadcast in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, features a retired police inspector who was on duty at Orgreave, Norman Taylor, recalling that he and other officers had parts of their statements dictated to them. “I recall this policeman in plain clothes mentioning that he had a good idea of what had happened. And that there was a preamble to set the scene,” Taylor told the programme. “He was reading from some paper, a paragraph or so. And he asked the people who were there to use that as their starting paragraph.”

Taylor said the paragraph was “basically the time and date, the name of the place”.

However, a barrister specialising in criminal trials, Mark George QC, analysed 40 police officers’ Orgreave statements, and found that many contained identical descriptions of alleged disorder by the miners. To prove the offence of riot, the prosecution has to establish a scene of general disorder within which a defendant committed a particular act, for example throwing a stone, which would otherwise carry a much lesser charge.

George found that 34 officers’ statements, supposed to have been compiled separately, used the identical phrase: “Periodically there was missile throwing from the back of the pickets.”

One paragraph, of four full sentences, was identical word for word in 22 separate statements. It described an alleged charge by miners, including the phrase: “There was however a continual barrage of missiles.”

Michael Mansfield QC, who defended three of the acquitted miners, described South Yorkshire police’s evidence then as “the biggest frame-up ever”. He is now acting for the Hillsborough Family Support Group, which has campaigned since the 1989 disaster for the South Yorkshire police officers responsible on the day – and those responsible for the scheme afterwards to blame the disaster on the fans, which Mansfield labels a cover-up – to be held accountable. “South Yorkshire police operated a culture of fabricating evidence with impunity, which was not reformed after Orgreave, and allowed to continue to Hillsborough five years later,” Mansfield said. “The current investigations by the IPCC and DPP into the force’s malpractice related to Hillsborough should include other malpractice by the same force at the time.”

South Yorkshire police paid £425,000 in 1991 to settle civil actions brought by 39 miners for what happened at and after Orgreave, including for assault, wrongful arrest and malicious prosecution, but no police officer was ever disciplined for any misconduct. The operation and prosecutions were given unqualified backing, even after they collapsed, by the chief constable, Peter Wright. Last month, the Hillsborough Independent Panel’s report revealed that Wright personally oversaw the South Yorkshire police operation to blame supporters for the 1989 Hillsborough disaster, including by briefing false stories to the media, and the wholesale changing of junior officers’ statements.

The IPCC announced on 12 October that South Yorkshire police had referred its conduct at and after Hillsborough to the IPCC for possible misconduct and criminal offences, including perverting the course of justice and perjury. Starmer announced that he would examine all the evidence brought to him to consider whether criminal charges should be brought.

On the collapsed prosecutions after Orgreave, South Yorkshire police told the Guardian in a statement: “We note the NUM’s intention and will await any decision from the IPCC. As always, SYP will co-operate fully with the IPCC in whatever it does. The force is not aware of any adverse comment about the [police] statements from the trial judge in the [Orgreave] case. If concerns existed then normal practice would have been for the judge to raise them at the time.”

David Conn
The Guardian, Sunday 21 October 2012 18.53 BST

Find this story at 21 October 2012

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