Met Police Agent Provocateurs

[Magda Hassan]

Sixth police spy in protest movement unmasked

Mark Kennedy, the first infiltrator to be exposed, says he may sue Scotland Yard for causing post-traumatic stress disorder

• Simon Hattenstone Rob Evans and Paul Lewis
  
• guardian.co.uk, Saturday 26 March 2011 Mark Kennedy, who spent seven years posing as an environmental activist, says undercover officers have been ostracised. Photograph: Philipp Ebeling for the Guardian A sixth police officer has been unmasked as an undercover spy in the protest movement as it emerged that Mark Kennedy, who spent seven years posing as an environmental activist, is considering suing Scotland Yard.
  In an interview with the Guardian Weekend magazine, Kennedy, who went "rogue" and offered to help environmental campaigners accused of planning to break into a power station, says he has suffered severe post-traumatic stress disorder and has been suicidal. His lawyers have been instructed to consider legal action against the police.
  The latest officer was reported to have been embedded in an anti-capitalist group for four years under the fake name of Simon Wellings. Newsnight on BBC2 reported that his true identity was discovered through a police blunder.
  Wellings inadvertently phoned a campaigner with the Globalise Resistance anti-capitalist group on his mobile phone while discussing photographs of demonstrators with another officer at a police station.
  The call was recorded on the campaigner's answerphone and Wellings is heard being pressed to identify protesters at demonstrations, according to Newsnight. He is recorded saying: "She's Hanna's girlfriend very overt lesbian last time I saw her, hair about that long, it was blonde, week before it was black."
  The infiltration of police spies became controversial after the identification of Kennedy and four others who had posed as members of a variety of political groups including environmental, anti-racist and anti-globalisation campaigns.
  The infiltration is the subject of four official investigations after police chiefs and ministers admitted the undercover operations had gone "badly wrong".
  Kennedy believes that other undercover officers have been similarly ostracised. "The way the police handled the whole extraction .. is absolutely thoughtless from a psychological point of view and from a safety point of view."
  He argues that the damage caused by such undercover work is too great, and that the police should rely more on electronic rather than human intelligence.
  Wellings pretended to be an activist with the group between 2001 and 2005. He always seemed to have enough money to go to many demonstrations in London, New York, Paris, Seville and other cities.
  Guy Taylor, a member, told Newsnight: "He didn't have much of a backstory. We never met any of his friends or his family." He volunteered to be the group's photographer and took "plenty of photographs".
  Wellings vanished after being rumbled by the other activists.
  The accidental phone call also highlights the role of police units which take photographs of protesters to be stored in secret databases such as Scotland Yard's CO11 public order branch.
  The other police officer is heard on the tape pressing Wellings to put names to the photographs, according to Newsnight. "Thing is we've got the CO11s. They're like who are these people ? Do you know who they are ?"
  Last night the Metropolitan police said:"The use of undercover officers is a valuable tactic in the fight against crime and disorder to keep people and communities safe.
  "Their use is highly regulated and governed in law through the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) and must be necessary, proportionate and lawful.
  "The deployment of undercover officers is also overseen by the Surveillance Commissioner who must be satisfied by their use."
  http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/20...y-unmasked
  
  
  
  

[Jan Klimkowski]

Following is a lengthy interview with police undercover/agent provocateur Mark Kennedy/Stone. It's published in The Guardian, and mediated by Britain's top press fixer, Max Clifford.

Despite this, the comments of Kennedy/Stone are often intriguing.

He is clearly a confused man, who has learnt absolutely nothing from his acts of gross betrayal - of his wife, his family, his activist friends, his activist lovers.

He has also learnt absolutely nothing from his own betrayal by the police (if his account of their treatment of him post-exposure, is to be believed).

At the personal level, this is all tragic.

However, Kennedy/Stone still fails to realize that he was mere flotsam to his handlers, and their deep political masters (detailed in earlier posts in this thread). Once Kennedy/Stone's cover was blown, along with an entire undercover/agent provocateur network, he was pond scum to be brushed off his handlers' jackboots.

Mark Kennedy: Confessions of an undercover cop

After seven years spent living as an environmental activist, Mark Stone was revealed to be policeman Mark Kennedy.

He talks to Simon Hattenstone about life on the outside, with no job, no friends and no idea who he really is

Simon Hattenstone The Guardian, Saturday 26 March 2011

There are two distinct images of Mark Kennedy that have emerged in the press. The first is a long-haired, unshaven, multi-earringed rebel that is Kennedy the undercover cop in his role as eco-activist "Mark Stone". The second is a man with short hair, swept to the side, clean-shaven, so spruce you can almost smell the soap the "real" Mark Kennedy, returned from life undercover.

Today, it takes me a while to recognise him. He could be a composite the hair is longer and unkempt, the face unshaven, tattoos are on display under his rolled-up sleeve. He seems to be morphing back into the eco-activist before my eyes.

Kennedy was an undercover police officer who spent seven years infiltrating a group of environmental activists under the alias Mark Stone. In 2009, as protesters planned to occupy and temporarily shut down one of Britain's biggest coal-fired power stations at Ratcliffe-on-Soar in Nottinghamshire, Kennedy passed on the information to his handlers. Nottinghamshire police subsequently arrested 114 people in a late-night swoop. Among them was "Stone" himself, who faced a prison sentence for conspiracy to commit aggravated trespass. Kennedy was trapped if he was not charged, it would blow his cover, yet he couldn't appear in court as somebody who did not actually exist. In the end, the case collapsed, leaving a trail of collateral damage up to £1m lost on the trial, hundreds of thousands wasted on his surveillance work, a community torn apart, lives shattered.

The story led to four ongoing inquiries about the nature of undercover policing and questions in parliament: did the environmental protesters need to be monitored so closely? Wasn't it a waste of police time and taxpayers' money? Were police acting as agents provocateurs? Did they have any right to inveigle their way into people's lives in such a manner? The story caught the popular imagination, not least because it emerged that for many of his years undercover, Kennedy who was married with children was involved in a serious relationship with one of the activists.

What kind of man could do that: nurture, befriend and ultimately love a group of people, then betray them? Kennedy, 41, wants to tell his side of the story. But at times he no longer seems sure what that story is.

He grew up in Orpington, Kent. His mother was a housewife, his father a traffic police officer. At 19, Kennedy also joined the police. He considered himself a modern cop with modern attitudes he had no time for the old racist views, was sympathetic to protesters in the environmental movement, and believed the job of the police was to enable society to operate fairly and democratically. He worked initially in uniform, then undercover in south London, buying drugs and weapons from dealers and passing information back to Scotland Yard. He was good at the job and was headhunted by the National Public Order Intelligence Unit, a secret body that runs an intelligence database of political activists. They asked him to help expose race-hate crimes more undercover work. This was just the kind of thing he had joined the police to do. Again, he was successful. It was then suggested that he hook up with a group of environmental activists in Nottinghamshire. Yes, it was infiltration and, yes, it involved spying on people he regarded largely as good guys, but he convinced himself he was on the side of the angels if he could tip the wink to his handlers about extremists and demonstrations, they could be policed efficiently and he would be working as a good officer while assisting a movement to which he was sympathetic. Of course, if his fellow activists had known this at the time, they would have regarded it all very differently.

"My role was to gather intelligence so appro priate policing could take place," Kennedy says. "It wasn't to prevent people from demonstrating. I met loads of great people who would go out every weekend and show their concern and demonstrate. Then there were other people who would want to take things further and maybe want to break into somewhere or destroy things, and then you start infringing on the rights of other people to go about their lawful business."

Kennedy still talks like an officer. His sentences are punctuated with words such as "tasked", "gatherings" and "proportionate policing". We meet at the offices of the publicist Max Clifford, whose help Kennedy sought when he reached a nadir. He had lost everything his old friends, his family, his activist friends. I had expected a cool, confident man a James Bond or Jason Bourne but Kennedy is fidgety and diffident. His neck reddens as he talks and only one eye focuses because of a childhood accident (at two, he climbed inside a cardboard box and a loose staple ripped an ocular muscle). After a few minutes he starts to stammer a schoolboy affliction that has only recently returned.

It was not easy to immerse himself among the activists, he says. They were a group of close-knit friends, many of whom had known each other since school. He went to meetings and marches, and gradually became accepted. The more involved he became, the more he changed physically. His hair grew long enough to wear in a ponytail, he got more piercings and tattoos. Gradually, he proved himself an indispensable comrade he could drive (many activists couldn't or wouldn't), he had money (made, he said, by drug dealing in Pakistan he told the activists he now wanted to turn his life around), he was a skilled climber and, perhaps most importantly, he was popular.

Somehow, he successfully managed both lives. While Stone had a thrilling time visiting 22 countries on a false passport, demonstrating against the building of a dam in Iceland, touring Spain with eco-activists, picketing arms fairs in London and penetrating anarchist networks in Germany and Italy, Kennedy quietly slipped information back to the police, even managing occasionally to get back to visit his wife, Edel, and two young children in Ireland. The couple were estranged, but maintained they were together for the sake of the children (four and two when he went undercover in 2002). If they asked, he would tell the activists that he was working away for a few days as an industrial climber.

Did he have to be an incredibly good liar to do this job? "Yes." Was he always a good liar? "Not in that sense. I was lying because it was my job to lie. I'm not a dishonest person. I had to tell lies about who Mark Stone was and where he was from for it to be real." He pauses. "To be fair, a lot of the things you do, say and talk about are very much based upon who you are as a person and the places you've been to and the things you've done, because five years later somebody will go, 'Ah, Mark, didn't you say you went here?' and you have to remember that. So a lot of the things I would talk about were pretty true."

Such deceit was on a different level from what he'd practised on the streets, buying drugs and guns. "If I'm going to buy a kilo of coke, the dealer doesn't really want to know me that well; it's all about the commodity. But this is different. People don't actually want anything from you all they want is to know you and be your friend."

Is it possible to do the job without becoming paranoid? "I'd use a different phrase. I never became complacent." That's a very different phrase, I say. He ums and ahs and stutters his way to a conclusion. "I never… I always liked to... I suppose I was a little bit paranoid." Can you do the job without it mentally unbalancing you? "I don't know." Where does Kennedy end and Stone begin? "Well... there is no line. You just can't say." He finally reaches a conclusion of sorts: "I always have understood and had a concern for the issues I was infiltrating. I don't think you could do this work if you didn't care about the climate."

Perhaps that is what ultimately made life impossible for Kennedy: he wanted to honour both sides be the honest cop and the genuine activist. But in the end he was caught in the middle, despised as a Judas by both sides.

Kennedy experienced heavy-handed policing first-hand. In 2006 he was beaten up by officers on the perimeter fence of the Drax power station. He says he was trying to protect a woman being hit on the legs with a baton when he was jumped by five uniformed officers they were there only because he had tipped off his handlers. "They kicked and beat me. They had batons and pummelled my head. One officer repeatedly stamped on my back. I had my finger broken, a big cut on my head and a prolapsed disc." There were plenty of other incidents, he says. "I experienced a lot of unjust policing. At times, I was appalled at being a police officer."

But he says that some of the best things in his life also happened as Mark Stone and not just the dramatic stuff. "There are some amazing social centres that are all voluntary-based. Take the Sumac Centre in Nottingham, a community garden that provides free food. If you had a social centre like that in every city, it would be great. And I was fortunate enough to be involved in that and see how it works."

And this became his community? "Yes. So many people I knew, or Mark Stone knew, became really good friends. It wasn't just about being an activist all the time."

I ask if he ever wanted to be Stone, and he gives a surprising answer. No, he says, because it was so frustrating failing to achieve what he had set out to do. "There was a lot of commitment and effort and tears put into things that didn't change anything." The activists were too conservative? "Yeah, I would say, and just very small in numbers." Actually, he says, they were a bit useless at the most basic things an effective group of protesters needs a number of competent climbers, to scale fences and gain access to buildings and power plants, and there were hardly any. Recently, it was announced there wouldn't be a climate camp this year, and that horrifies him. What better time to discuss the environment and policing and all the issues that have come about with his case?

It's bewildering listening to Kennedy make the case for a more radical and committed group of ecowarriors. The bottom line is that he went in to betray them and did just that. Does he feel guilty? "It's something I find very hard to think about. When you're on the front line in a riot situation, the people around you are your buddies. Everybody looks out for each other, and I experienced that on numerous occasions. There were people who, if they had only a couple of quid left, would buy you a pint. So, yes, there are some great people who didn't need to be reported on. They believed I was something else, and that hurts a lot."

And then there are the women. Those in the environment movement claim Kennedy had many sexual relationships through the years, and some believe it was a systematic means of gaining trust and gathering intelligence. One woman with whom he had a relationship overseas said she felt "violated" when he was outed as a police officer. Kennedy maintains there were only two relationships, one of which was serious.

Look, I say, it's easy to talk about the trauma of betraying a guy who buys you a pint, but when it's a lover, surely that's on a different level? Silence.

"For me, that whole kind of incident..." He starts again. "That's not the right word. I felt in some ways that I was really alone, that I was the only person as an undercover officer who had ever done that; subsequently, I discovered everyone was doing it. The person I had the relationship with is an amazing person, a really amazing person. The love I shared with her and the companionship we shared was the realest thing I ever did." More real than his marriage? "Yeah, there were no lies about that at all," he says without irony.

How did he feel when he was in bed at night? Was there not part of him desperate to confess? "Yes, all the time. All the time. Yes." But how could he continue in a relationship with someone who might be the love of his life and know it's all based on a lie? "It's one for the psychologists," he says quietly. "It's just how it was. I don't know." Did he never think of coming clean, begging forgiveness and leaving the police? "No, no. I'm not saying it didn't cross my mind, it just wasn't a realistic proposition. It would never have worked." Because he'd have ended up rejected by both sides? "Absolutely." He looks at me. "You know, our relationship was remarked upon in the activist community as being a great relationship."

Things reached a head in April 2009, when the activists planned to break into the Ratcliffe-on-Soar power plant. It was initially suggested that "Stone" climb the power plant, but he refused. This was Kennedy the good policeman if he led the protesters, any subsequent case could collapse because he would be regarded as an agent provocateur. He says he told his handlers that he had passed on all the necessary information and didn't want to be part of the protest, but they told him they wanted him there. He eventually agreed to drive a lorry. He recorded two meetings held at Iona school on 12 and 13 April, where protesters discussed shutting down the plant, and passed on the recordings. At one point activists heard there had been a leak and that security had gathered at the power station. According to activists, it was Kennedy who went to recce the station and reported back that all was clear.

On 14 April, the day before the planned takeover, the police arrested 114 activists. While the other 113 shared one law firm, Bindmans, Kennedy's handlers said he did not need one because he was a police officer. "I said, look, everybody else has got a solicitor, Mark Stone hasn't it looks really odd. They said, don't worry about it, and I said, well, I have to worry about it because I'm now on bail to go back to be re-interviewed." The Nottinghamshire detectives had no idea that an undercover officer was involved. "As far as they were concerned, they were interviewing Mark Stone, a thorn in their side for the past seven years he's a catch, let's make sure we push charges."

Every day for three months, Kennedy phoned his handlers to ask what was happening, and heard nothing. Eventually, a week before the day on which he and 26 others had been told they would be charged, the case against him was dropped. He had suggested that if he was released without charge, the other drivers should be, too, to avoid suspicion, but he was ignored and all the remaining 26 activists were charged. It left him in an impossible situation. "It totally exposed me. To sit in a pub with everyone else and for them to say, 'How did you get off?' What could I say? I didn't say anything. That was hugely stressful. Certainly it raised a lot of questions among people."

Soon after the case was dropped, he received a message from his handlers: the surveillance operation was being dropped and he was to tell the activists that he was leaving to visit family in America for an indefinite period.

When he returned to the Met in October 2009, he discovered two alarming things one, his time undercover had left him out of touch; and two, he was now a pariah in police circles. "Over seven years, there was no training or keeping me up to speed with what was going on in the police. So when I went back, I probably wasn't even qualified to drive a Panda, didn't know how to use a radio. I didn't know how any of the systems worked. I went for an interview with the personnel department and they didn't even have my file." When they asked Kennedy what he wanted to do now, he told them, "I need a role that keeps me off the streets, reasonably covert, some kind of detective job." That was all very well, they said, but he'd have to apply like anyone else. "They said, 'We can't give you a job on merit of having done a good job before. You're not really qualified to do anything.'

"I was not looked after at all. I didn't think there was anything left for me in the police, so I left." Kennedy does not believe he is alone. He says he has talked to other former undercover officers who feel they were cast aside on their return to mainstream policing and later left the service suffering from post-traumatic stress.

In early 2010, he returned as Mark Stone to his friends in Nottingham. Perhaps he didn't know where else to go. He wanted to try to make things work with his girlfriend or at the very least provide a more satisfactory ending to their relationship and his years among the protesters. (He had done a course on servicing wind turbines, and told his old friends he was going to travel the world doing that.) But when they were on holiday last July, his girlfriend came across a passport belonging to Mark Kennedy in the glove compartment of his van. Again, he lied and told her he had many passports from his drug smuggling days.

She might have given him the benefit of the doubt, but when she told the other activists, they did not. They demanded a meeting in which he was quizzed for four hours. "I was absolutely shitting myself. They sat in a semicircle around me. It was hugely menacing. I told them nothing to start with. They just kept saying they knew I was a cop, that I was married with kids. They knew my mum. They knew my home address." Eventually he broke down, and that was when they brought in his girlfriend. "The look of devastation on her face destroyed me."

He was asked to make a statement confessing everything. He said he would think about it, then ran away. Was it a relief that he was forced to come clean? He nods. "Yeah, a huge relief." He stops to correct himself. "Later it became a relief, after the initial shock."

He hoped to manage his own public outing, but was overtaken by events. Last December, 20 of the charged activists were convicted of trespass offences. Then, in January, the case of the remaining six collapsed. There were a number of stories circulating as to why and Kennedy was at the centre of them all. One suggested that he had gone native in one recorded phone conversation, he suggested he could give evidence for the defence and said the police tactics with which he was involved were like using "a hammer to crack a nut". Another version of events suggested that by taking such an active role in the protest, he had become an agent provocateur. But, ultimately, the case seems to have collapsed for less noble reasons it is thought the CPS realised that the evidence Kennedy had recorded at the school actually helped the activists, showing that most were still making up their minds about whether and how to participate. If that was the case, the prosecution could not win if they used the evidence, they undermined their own case; if they didn't use it, the defence would accuse them of non-disclosure.

Kennedy found himself front-page news. There was a rush of stories about him and, appropriately enough, it was impossible to distinguish fact from fiction. It was suggested that he had set up his own companies after leaving the police (true he says he planned to start a business abseiling down skyscrapers to clean their windows) and that he had worked in private security spying on the activists after he had left the police (false, he insists he was asked to advise a company on trends in activism, but says he declined).

According to Kennedy, the police did their utmost to distance themselves from him, telling reporters in off-the-record briefings that he was "a bad apple" and wholly unrepresentative of undercover officers. But a week after he was exposed in the national press, a number of similar stories emerged, including that of undercover officer Jim Boyling, who had married an activist he met while infiltrating Reclaim The Streets.

By now Kennedy had nowhere left to run. Every bridge was burned he had not seen his children for three months, and neither the police nor the protesters wanted anything to do with him. He wasn't sleeping, barely eating, and was terrified. He was hiding in America, convinced his former police bosses were looking for him and that activists wanted revenge. A group of German anarchists said they hoped Kennedy "spends the rest of his life looking over his shoulder. That is the minimum price he should have to pay." In the US he told a psychiatrist that he was suicidal.

Kennedy returned to England in a desperate state but, having no fixed address, he could not sign up to a GP. While undercover, he should have received an assessment from a police psychologist every three months, but claims he went two whole years without even one. He also says he received no counselling from the police when he was removed from undercover work. When asked if they were remiss in their pastoral care, both the Metropolitan police and National Public Order Intelligence Unit declined to comment in light of ongoing inquiries.

"I felt hugely alone," Kennedy says. He looks away. "Still do. It was a really dark time. I had two choices: I was either going to top myself or try to get some help."

All the time we've been talking, I've wondered one thing: how would he have felt if his girlfriend had ended up in prison because of his actions? For the first time he seems shocked by a question. "She was nothing to do with anything." Why not? "She was doing something else." By chance, she was not involved in that particular protest. And if she had been? "It didn't occur to me."

As for the future, he hasn't a clue what it holds. There is a documentary being made about him, talk of a movie, even, but he knows that's not going to see him through the rest of his working life. He says he'd like to use his experience to show people that police officers and activists don't always fit a neat stereotype, but he's not sure how. For now, though, he says, he has plenty of work to do on himself. This week he is visiting his family to try to make a fresh start with the children. He says they were distraught to see him in the newspapers, and admits that his daughter is "quite frosty" with him.

Does he think people will ever trust him again? "Do you mean people I used to associate with? No, never. Never. I shattered that trust, I accept that."

Does he think he will ever be able to trust himself again? "In what way?" he asks. Well, I say, is he confident that he knows who he is now?

"No, not at all. Deep down, I know I have these core values, but it's going to be a long process to find out who I am."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/20...l-activist

[Jan Klimkowski]

As a result of the exposure of the police agents provocateurs, and the disgraceful refusal of the state to declare that key witnesses were police assets, 20 protestors now have the right to appeal their earlier convictions.

However, the process and protocol is Gormenghastian: the Director of Public Prosecutions has "invited" those convicted to appeal against their conviction!!!!

The convictions are clearly totally unsound, because the state prima facie failed to disclose crucial evidence in court. In truth, the police should be sued for fabricating evidence. That the original convictions are dodgy, and unsound, is not debatable.

DPP asks power station protesters to appeal against trespass convictions

Keir Starmer says Ratcliffe-on-Soar demonstrators must appeal in the light of involvement of undercover officer Mark Kennedy

Sam Jones guardian.co.uk, Monday 18 April 2011 12.50 BST

The 20 protesters convicted of conspiracy to commit aggravated trespass after a demonstration at the Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station have been invited to appeal against their convictions by the director of public prosecutions.

Keir Starmer QC ordered a review of the convictions three months ago after revelations in the Guardian about the role played by PC Mark Kennedy, who was allegedly at the centre of a £250,000-a-year undercover operation within the climate change movement.

Using the name Mark Stone, the former Metropolitan police officer spent seven years infiltrating environmental groups across Europe.

The 20 protesters were among more than 100 people arrested when police raided the Iona school in Sneinton, Nottingham, on the morning of Easter Monday, 13 April 2009.

Although they were convicted and given a mixture of community orders and conditional discharges, the cases against six of their fellow demonstrators collapsed because Kennedy offered to give evidence on their behalf. The trial led to claims that police had withheld significant, secretly recorded tapes from the defence and the court.

Starmer said inviting the demonstrators' legal representatives to appeal was "the only proper course of action".

In a statement, he said: "I instructed Clare Montgomery QC to review the safety of the convictions of the individuals convicted at Nottingham crown court on 14 December 2010 in light of non-disclosure of material relating to the activities of an undercover police officer.

"Ms Montgomery has now completed her review and, having carefully considered her conclusions, I believe that the safety of the convictions should be considered by the court of appeal as soon as possible."

The DPP said that as the prosecution had been unable to lodge an appeal to the court of appeal, he had invited the defence to lodge one "and to include the issue of non-disclosure of material relating to the activities of an undercover police officer in any grounds of appeal".

He added: "I have also indicated that the CPS will assist in any steps necessary to expedite the appeal.

"The safety of the convictions is a matter that can only be dealt with by the court of appeal.

"I am satisfied that, despite the ongoing reviews into what happened in this case, this is the only proper course of action. It would be wrong if, having reached this conclusion, I waited until the reviews were completed before contacting the defence about a possible appeal.

"As reviews into the handling of this case have yet to report, it would not be appropriate for me to comment further on any issues involving the undercover officer."

In February this year, the head of the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) said undercover policing operations should have to be authorised in advance by a judge.

Sir Hugh Orde, the Acpo president, said the change was needed to restore public confidence amid concerns about the role played by Kennedy.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/apr/18/police-protest

[Jan Klimkowski]

Now here's a real villain deserving of constant covert police surveillance (not). angryfire

Protester to sue police over secret surveillance

John Catt, aged 86, has had his presence at peaceful protests systematically logged by secretive police unit over four years

Rob Evans and Paul Lewis The Guardian, Tuesday 3 May 2011

An 86-year-old man has been granted permission to launch a lawsuit against police chiefs who have classified him as a "domestic extremist" and kept a detailed record of his political activities on a clandestine database.

John Catt, who has no criminal record, is bringing the high court action against a secretive police unit which systematically logged his presence at more than 55 peace and human rights protests over a four-year period.

Some of the entries record his habit of taking out his sketch pad and drawing the scene at demonstrations. Other entries contain notes on his appearance such as "clean shaven" and the slogans on his clothes.

His lawsuit will challenge the power of police to compile secret files on law-abiding protesters.

A victory for Catt, a pensioner who lives in Brighton, would be a further blow to the police unit, which has been criticised for using undercover officers to infiltrate protest groups.

The exposure of spies such as Mark Kennedy, who spent seven years working undercover in the environmental movement, has highlighted the way in which the National Public Order Intelligence Unit has been carrying out surveillance of protesters.

The unit has been compiling a huge, nationwide database of thousands of protesters for more than a decade, drawing on intelligence from undercover officers, uniformed surveillance teams, informants in protest groups and covert intercepts.

Police claim the unit only monitors so-called "domestic extremists", whom they define as hardcore activists who commit crime to further their political aims.

Catt, a campaigner for many years, is one of the few activists confirmed to be on the database.

He says he is "committed to protesting through entirely peaceful means" and told the Guardian he was "shocked and terrified" after he saw the extent of the files held on him. He obtained them using the Data Protection Act.

In legal papers, he describes how the files record the political aims of the demonstrations he attended between 2005 and 2009, "highly personalised" information about his appearance and "hearsay evidence and police officers' opinions".

At a protest against Guantánamo Bay organised by Sussex Action for Peace on 25 September 2005, police noted: "John CATT was seen wearing a Free Omar T-shirt, he was clean shaven … John CATT was very quiet and was holding a board with orange people on it."

At another protest on 10 March 2006, police recorded: "John CATT arrived in his white Citroën Berlingo van. He removed several banners for the protesters to use and at the completion of the demo returned the same to the van. He was using his drawing pad to sketch a picture of the protest and the police presence."

On another occasion he was logged as having "sat on a folding chair and appeared to be sketching" at a demonstration.

Police tracked his van after noticing it at demonstrations. He and his daughter Linda were stopped and searched one Sunday morning in London by police who were alerted by a roadside camera recognising the van's number plate. The pair had been on their way to help a family member move house.

Catt, who is represented by the London law firm Fisher Meredith, has been given permission by a high court judge to take legal action against police chiefs, as he claims they have violated his human rights by keeping "excessive and irrelevant" secret files on him.

He wants all the entries concerning him to be permanently deleted.

Police chiefs say they are legally entitled to maintain files on Catt, who has been taking part in a campaign to close down a Brighton arms factory owned by an American firm, EDO MBM Technology. According to police, the Smash EDO group has organised a "campaign of illegality designed to pressurise EDO to cease its lawful business", leading to "169 convictions including criminal damage and aggravated trespass, assault and harassment of staff".

The "minor" surveillance of Catt is justified, they say, because his "voluntary association at the Smash EDO protests forms part of a far wider picture of information which it is necessary for the police to continue to monitor in order to plan to maintain the peace, minimise the risks of criminal offending and adequately to detect and prosecute offenders".

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/may/03...rveillance

[Jan Klimkowski]

The guilty investigating the guilty.

So much for British justice.

Mark Kennedy case: independent inquiry ordered over CPS claims

CPS stands accused of misleading courts over the collapse of a trial against six environmental activists

Paul Lewis and Rob Evans guardian.co.uk, Thursday 9 June 2011 16.22 BST

A senior judge is to conduct an independent inquiry into evidence that prosecutors suppressed secret surveillance tapes recorded by the undercover police officer Mark Kennedy, the Guardian can reveal.

The director of public prosecutions, Keir Starmer QC, has requested an independent investigation into claims, as disclosed on Tuesday, that the CPS misled courts over the collapse of a trial against six activists accused of conspiring to break into Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station.

Starmer said in a statement: "In light of growing concerns about the non-disclosure of material relating to the activities of an undercover police officer in the Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station cases, I have decided that I will set up an independent inquiry, conducted by a senior legal figure, to work in tandem with the Independent Police Complaints Commission inquiry into the matter which began in January 2011."

The IPCC has been looking at allegations that vital evidence was withheld from lawyers respresenting the activists.

Starmer added : "The two inquiries will have full access to all the available evidence, whether held by the police or the CPS, and will share information. They will also share their provisional findings before final reports are drawn up."

When the trial was abandoned in January, the CPS told the court that "previously unavailable information" had come to light just two days earlier that undermined its case against the activists.

However, the Guardian detailed how the supposedly new information the Kennedy tapes had been in the CPS's possession for more than a year.

Prosecutors appear to have taken part in a number of high-level meetings with police about Kennedy's potentially explosive surveillance tapes, but withheld them from defence lawyers.

In what could be a major miscarriage of justice, the withholding of the tapes may also have led to the wrongful conviction of 20 other activists who were convicted of planning to break into the same power station in December. Their case is now before the court of appeal.

Starmer had already authorised two internal inquiries into accusations that prosecutors suppressed secret surveillance tapes, which was being dealt with as a "disciplinary" matter, but was under growing pressure to refer the matter to an independent body.

Both his predecessor as DPP, Ken Macdonald, and Vera Baird, the former solicitor general, called on Wednesday for an independent figure to investigate the controversy.

Starmer's decision is understood to have followed a number of high-level discussions, which have included the attorney general, Dominic Grieve, and senior police officials.

Senior CPS officials are also concerned that there may also have been serious failings by police.

The six activists whose trial collapsed are known as the "deniers" because they told investigators they had never agreed to take part in the occupation of the Nottinghamshire power station in 2009.

Kennedy, who developed growing sympathies for the activists after living among them for seven years, later revealed he secretly recorded conversations that heavily supported their case.

"The truth of the matter is that the tapes clearly show that the six defendants who were due to go on trial had not joined any conspiracy," Kennedy said.

But his surveillance tapes were never disclosed to the defence lawyers despite formal requests.

On Wednesday, Macdonald and Baird both told BBC Newsnight that the controversy was extremely serious and warranted a full and independent inquiry.

The former DPP said an inquiry conducted by an independent figure was "much more likely to get at the truth".

He also expressed concern over the case of the 20 activists who were convicted at the end of last year after conceding they planned to break into Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station.

During the trial they argued their actions were defensible to avert climate change. The prosecution told the jury that the 20 campaigners, known as the "justifiers", were in fact seeking publicity and did not genuinely believe their occupation of the Nottinghamshire plant would prevent large-scale carbon emissions.

In April, Starmer said that the 20 convictions might be unsafe in light of the failure to disclose Kennedy's evidence, and formally urged the activists to challenge the verdicts at the court of appeal.

Macdonald said: "We are looking here at a position in which a number of people who might have otherwise have been acquitted, might have been convicted, through the absence of this material," Macdonald said. "When it is that serious, I think you need an inquiry that is going to command public confidence."

He added: "If the prosecution don't disclose their evidence fairly and appropriately, defendants don't get fair trials. We saw in the 70s and 80s the effects of non-disclosure terrible miscarriages of justice … That is the gravity of this situation and that is why I feel the inquiry needs to be independent."

Baird described the situation as "very, very, grave". "You have maybe a bunch of people who should never have been prosecuted at all have been convicted … It is profoundly wrong that this occurred, and we need to find the culprits."

She added it was wrong for the CPS to "investigate themselves". "It is the need for the public to be satisfied that this is being thoroughly investigated by somebody who has no axe to grind. The CPS blamed the police originally, the police are now blaming the CPS. We need somebody remote from both of them to get to the bottom of this."

In his statement this afternoon, Starmer also said the two inquiries working in tandem "will provide independent scrutiny of the actions of both the police and the CPS in relation to the disclosure issues arising from the Ratcliffe on Soar power station cases. It is an arrangement supported by the IPCC and the Chief Constable of Nottinghamshire. Until the two inquiries report, it is important that no conclusions are drawn about any individuals involved in this matter."

The latest inquiry announced by Starmer will be the eighth formal investigation to be launched in response to the Guardian's ongoing investigation into Kennedy and three other undercover police officers.

In addition to Kennedy, it has emerged that police officers known as Lynn Watson, Mark Jacobs and Jim Boyling were given new identities to live for several years among activists.

Kennedy, Jacobs and Boyling are all accused of having long-term sexual relations with activists; Boyling even married an activist he met while living undercover.

Inquiries are under way by Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary, the Independent Police Complaints Commission and the Serious Organised Crime Agency. Police forces have also opened internal disciplinary investigations.

However, activists argue that only a full public inquiry can address the breadth of concerns about the operation run by the National Public Order Intelligence Unit.

[Magda Hassan]

Undercover policing: We need an inquiry that looks at the bigger picture

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Rebecca Quinn is a campaigner for No Police Spies, a group fighting for an end to police infiltration of protest groups
The revelations that the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) have colluded with the police in suppressing crucial covertly obtained evidence has been met with outrage and deep concern by both activists and leading justice experts.
It comes as the latest scandal in a string of exposés that began in January of this year when the existence of an extensive network of undercover police officers tasked with living among groups of environmentally and politically active people hit front pages and news bulletins for almost a month.

What may very well have made a brief intrigue in the press was catapulted into the headlines by the collapse of the £1 million trial of six of the environmental activists as the CPS withdrew the case. This occurred just two days after the defence asked for full disclosure of any evidence they held that linked Mark Kennedy to their charge.
The reason given for this was that "previously unavailable information" had come to light that compromised the prosecution case, but as we have found out this week from an information leak within the CPS, that statement was an outright lie.
The CPS was in possession of information relating to Mark Kennedy's role, and of evidence that would have "reinforced the difficulties" of prosecuting the case, for over a year before the trial collapsed. A previous trial, as part of the same case, had already led to 20 environmental activists being convicted. They have since been invited by the CPS to appeal these convictions unopposed.
Keir Starmer QC, head of the CPS, has this week called for an independent and public inquiry into its handling of the Ratcliffe trials. The remit of the inquiry is to specifically look at the role the CPS played in preventing certain evidence from reaching court.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) began an inquiry into the involvement Nottinghamshire Police had in this obstruction in January. The two investigations are from this point, according to Keir Starmer, going to work in tandem and use the same materials.
For those of us who have been long calling for a full and public judicial inquiry into the wide range of issues that have stemmed from the undercover scandal, our call has been far from answered. So far a total of eight inquiries', investigations' and reviews' have been launched into different aspects of the undercover issue. This is the first to be conducted with an independent legal expert to preside over it, but to put it bluntly, its remit is only to tackle the scandal of the week.
It is true that Starmer's inquiry will provide some answers about what exactly has been going on behind closed doors regarding one case. As important as it is to gain answers about how and why the CPS broke their own guidelines in handling the Ratcliffe trials, this is only one part of one story.
We know that at least 15 undercover operatives employed by the National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU) have lived and worked among politically active groups in this country for many years. What this inquiry will not tell us is whether we need to be worried about other cases the CPS has bought forward that have involved undercover officers. What other convictions have been made in British courts that have also had evidence withheld from them?
Ken McDonald QC and Vera Baird QC, speaking on Newsnight on Wednesday, recalled the terrible miscarriages of justice that occurred in the 1970s and 1980s, such as that of the Birmingham Six. The restoration of justice to those wrongly convicted took years, but when the truth was finally established it lead to significant reform of the British Justice system and the dismantling of the corrupt state bodies.
Starmer's inquiry may reveal why exactly one set of convictions were so unsafe, but it will not reveal how many other convictions may also have been made with the CPS withholding evidence gathered by undercover operatives. So far the CPS have offered no reassurance that the Ratcliffe trials are a unique case.
While we must wait to find out whether what happened to these defendants was intentional or negligent, either are indicative of what may very well be a systematic failing of the CPS and thus a systematic miscarriage of justice taking place since these kinds of undercover operations began. This can only be established if it is fully investigated.
The same goes for the multiple other dimensions to the undercover issue. The allegations made against Kennedy's conduct, that he acted as an agent provocateur, that he used sex as a means to gain information and that he was selling information that he gained to private companies while a serving officer have not as yet been treated as an indicator of wider trends within this kind of policing.
The response to the undercover issue so far has been just to focus on individual officers alone and avoid implication that what has been exposed was, in fact, standard practice.
There is no rigorous inquiry currently looking into the wide scale deployment of undercover officers to target the politically active. Nothing is inquiring what justification existed to deploy these officers in the first place, what aims they had in mind, what guidelines and safeguards were put in place, and nothing looks into the disturbing allegation that officers' rogue' behaviour was not rogue at all, but condoned and encouraged practice.
The relationship between the CPS and the police in handling undercover evidence is just one part of an incredibly complex and largely invisible jigsaw that must be pieced together if public confidence is to ever be restored. This will only be made possible by an inquiry that has the remit and authority to look at the big picture, and ultimately establish how any of this was allowed to happen in the first place.
http://www.leftfootforward.org/2011/06/u...-reaction/

[Jan Klimkowski]

With the Murdoch crime family saga dominating the news, TPTB have decided this is a good time to bury bad news, and kick this police agent provocateur outrage into the longest of long grass:

Mark Kennedy's secret tapes: CPS launches wide-ranging inquiry

Judge to look into arrests of Ratcliffe-on-Soar environmental campaigners and undercover policeman's surveillance tapes

Rob Evans and Paul Lewis guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 13 July 2011 15.43 BST

A leading former judge has been appointed to lead an expanded inquiry into claims that prosecutors suppressed secret surveillance tapes recorded by undercover police officer Mark Kennedy.

Sir Christopher Rose, a retired court of appeal judge noted for his fierce independence, will head the inquiry which was set up by the director of public prosecutions, Keir Starmer QC.

Rose has been in charge of scrutinising the surveillance activities of the police and other official bodies for the past five years.

He will examine allegations that the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), the agency headed by Starmer, misled the courts when it decided to abandon the prosecution of six activists accused of conspiring to invade one of Britain's biggest power stations.

The CPS told a court in January that it was dropping the prosecution because "previously unavailable information" which undermined their case had come to light.

However, documents obtained by the Guardian indicated the information that was supposed to be new the tapes recorded by Kennedy had been in the hands of the CPS for more than a year.

Starmer announced on Wednesday the remit of the inquiry and the appointment of Rose, who was the vice-president of the criminal division of the court of appeal until April 2006.

Starmer said "in light of growing concerns about the non-disclosure of material relating to the activities" of Kennedy the inquiry would not only delve into the issue of the suppressed evidence but also investigate why only 26 of the 114 activists who were initially arrested over the alleged plot to break into the Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station in Nottinghamshire were charged. The others were released, raising suspicions that those who were charged were picked out unfairly or for political reasons.

The expansion of the inquiry comes after Kennedy hinted in a radio interview that he could have potentially explosive information about the decision to charge some activists and not others.

Starmer said the independent inquiry would examine:

"Whether the CPS approach to charging in this case was right, bearing in mind the known existence of an undercover police officer in the operation;

"Whether the CPS and prosecution counsel complied with their disclosure duties properly in relation to the known existence of an undercover police officer in this case;

"Whether the CPS arrangements in place for handling the known existence of an undercover police officer, including arrangements between the police and the CPS, the CPS and counsel and the local prosecuting team and the national co-ordinator, were adequate and properly followed in this case;

"Whether the CPS followed all relevant guidance and policy in relation to the known existence of an undercover police officer in this case."

Starmer said : "Sir Christopher will have full access to all the available evidence and will examine the issues with the utmost thoroughness. Inevitably this will take time but will be completed as soon as is practicable."

Starmer said he intended to publish the findings and recommendations made by Rose.

[Jan Klimkowski]

So, even judges of the Court of Appeal have to accept Kennedy/Stone was "arguably" an agent provocateur.

Undercover police officer unlawfully spied on climate activists, judges rule

Mark Kennedy was arguably an agent provocateur, says appeal verdict quashing Ratcliffe-on-Soar conspiracy convictions

Rob Evans and Paul Lewis guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 20 July 2011 17.32 BST

Three senior judges have ruled that the undercover police officer Mark Kennedy unlawfully spied on protesters and arguably acted as an "agent provocateur".

In a damning ruling explaining why they quashed the convictions of 20 climate change activists, the court of appeal judges said they shared the "great deal of justifiable public disquiet" about the case.

The judges, who included the lord chief justice, said there had been a "miscarriage" of justice as a result of prosecutors failing to disclose to the defendants vital evidence gathered by the undercover officer.

The activists discovered their convictions for conspiracy to break into Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station had been quashed on Tuesday.

On Wednesday, giving their reasons for overturning the convictions, the judges made stinging criticisms about Kennedy's undercover operation, which they revealed was part of a long-term police infiltration of "extreme leftwing groups in the UK".

The judges said Kennedy "was involved in activities which went much further than the authorisation he was given, and appeared to show him as an enthusiastic supporter of the proposed occupation of the power station and, arguably, an agent provocateur".

The suggestion that an undercover police officer may have incited criminal actions is likely to be damaging to Sir Hugh Orde, who has been tipped as a replacement for the outgoing Met commissioner, Sir Paul Stephenson.

Orde runs the Association of Chief Police Officers, which until recently managed the network of undercover operatives sent to spy on political groups.

Wednesday's ruling heaps further criticism on the police and prosecutors, who have been subjected to seven official inquiries into their conduct of the case.

The campaigners who were charged with plotting to occupy the power station have walked free.

Lord Judge, sitting with Mr Justice Treacy and Mr Justice Calvert-Smith, declared: "Something went seriously wrong with the trial. The prosecution's duties in relation to disclosure were not fulfilled. The result was that the appellants were convicted following a trial in which elementary principles which underpin the fairness of our trial procedures were ignored.

"The jury were ignorant of evidence helpful to the defence, which was in the possession of the prosecution but which was never revealed. As a result justice miscarried."

Turning to Kennedy, they said the undercover officer who infiltrated the environmental movement for seven years had "apparently convincingly purported to be a supporter of the beliefs of those who later became involved in the plot" to break into the power station.

Under laws regulating surveillance operations, police officers are only allowed to take part in activities their superiors have approved beforehand.

Kennedy, who operated under the codename UCO 133, was authorised only to drive and drop off "the activists prior to them committing offences. UCO 133 will withdraw from the vicinity of the power station to avoid arrest and avoid becoming a witness to offences." That authorisation was given on April 9 2009, four days before the planned power station break-in.

However, the judges said Kennedy had personally taken part in reconnaissance trips of the power station as far back as January 2009. "When the protesters started to congregate just before the proposed occupation, it appears that Kennedy went much further than his authorisation."

The judges said he was one of two people who checked if there were police guarding the police station, and cited an instance when he agreed to use his expertise as a climber to get into the plant.

Prosecutors, in conceding that the activists were innocent, said it was "at least arguable … that he was regarded as something of an éminence grise by some of the younger activists upon whom they relied for advice and support".

The judges said: "In short, it appears that he played what can fairly be described, in the submission of Matthew Ryder QC on behalf of the appellants, 'a significant role in assisting, advising and supporting … the very activity for which these appellants were prosecuted'."

Kennedy was among 114 activists arrested hours before the proposed break-in was due to begin. In the months after the arrest, according to the judges, he "continued to be part of the group of campaigners and continued to provide information to his police handler about how the suspects who had been bailed were responding to the arrests".

He had covertly recorded a meeting of activists the day before the proposed break-in. The contents of these tapes, said the judges, would have undermined the prosecution's case, but were never disclosed to lawyers working for the campaigners.

The judges also revealed that Kennedy, who had begun to sympathise with the activists, wrote an official statement which provided "a measure of support" for the defendants, but which was also not disclosed.

After he was exposed last year, Kennedy offered to help the campaigners in their trial, but later withdrew his offer.

On Wednesday afternoon, Kennedy through his PR adviser, Max Clifford, said: "I refute the claim that I acted as an agent provocateur. At no time have I, or did I, actively encourage a group or person to engage in an activity that they were not already engaged in."

Vera Baird, a former Labour solicitor-general, criticised police chiefs. "It was an ill-thought-out campaign to undermine people who turned out to be honest campaigners, not criminals, during which they wasted an enormous amount of money on this man who inevitably went native living with decent people for all those years," she said. "They were then left with him having them down and with evidence showing that there was no crime in the first place."

[Peter Lemkin]

Just as there are [sometimes] special protections for whistleblowers, there should be the MOST draconian of penalties for squealing pig's pigs, who infiltrate, lie, and act as agents provocateurs :angeldevil:! What is his penalty going to be?!

[Magda Hassan]

Police accused of allowing undercover officers to lie in court

False evidence claim arises from papers suggesting undercover officer Jim Boyling hid identity when prosecuted over protest

• Rob Evans and Paul Lewis
  
• guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 19 October 2011 17.11 BST
  
• Article history
  

Undercover officer Jim Boyling gave a false name and occupation when giving evidence under oath

Police chiefs are facing damaging allegations that they authorised undercover officers embedded in protest groups to give false evidence in court in order to protect their undercover status.
Documents seen by the Guardian suggest that an undercover officer concealed his true identity from a court when he was prosecuted alongside a group of protesters for occupying a government office during a demonstration.
From the moment he was arrested, he gave a false name and occupation, maintaining this fiction throughout the entire prosecution, even when he gave evidence under oath to barristers. The officer, Jim Boyling, and his police handlers never revealed to the activists who stood alongside him in court that he was actually an undercover policeman who had penetrated their campaign months earlier under a fake identity.
Boyling was undercover, using the name Jim Sutton, between 1995 and 2000 in the campaign Reclaim the Streets, which organised colourful, nonviolent demonstrations against the overuse of cars, such as blocking roads and holding street parties.
Boyling and the protesters were represented by the same law firm, Bindmans, as they held sensitive discussions to decide how they were going to defend themselves in court. The activists allege that Boyling and his superiors broke the campaigners' fundamental right to hold legally protected consultations with their lawyers and illicitly obtained details of the private discussions.
The fresh allegations triggered another wave of criticism of police chiefs over their infiltration of protest movements, and came on the eve of a major report by Bernard Hogan-Howe, in his previous role at Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary.
The Guardian has learned that police chiefs have authorised undercover officers to hide their real identities from courts when they have been prosecuted for offences arising out of their deployment.
Peter Black, another police officer who worked with Boyling in the same covert unit penetrating political campaigns, said Boyling's case was not unique. He said from time to time, prosecutions were allowed to go ahead, as this helped to build up their credibility with the activists they were infiltrating.
He added that being prosecuted was "part of their cover", as they were regularly involved in public disorder.
Police chiefs authorised their spies to be prosecuted only for offences that fell short of a jail sentence, according to Black. If a police spy was in danger of being locked up, prosecutions of the officer and the other activists would be "mysteriously dropped", he said.
Alternatively, undercover officers faced with a stretch in jail would disappear, telling activists things were too hot and they were going on the run. They would thereby enhance their reputations among the activists and at the same time solve a difficult problem for their handlers.
Hogan-Howe has been leading an inquiry into the legality and accountability of planting undercover police officers into political groups after revelations about Mark Kennedy, the police spy who spent seven years infiltrating the environmental movement.
So far this year, eight official inquiries have been set up to examine the conduct of police and prosecutors after the exposure of a network of police spies in political movements.
Three court of appeal judges have overturned the convictions of 20 environmental protesters, ruling that crucial evidence recorded by Kennedy was withheld from their original trial. Another trial, of protesters accused of plotting to break into a power station, also had to be abandoned.
Police have been accused of wasting huge sums of public money by spying on protesters pursuing legitimate campaigns. They were also castigated after it was disclosed that Kennedy and other spies had sexual relationships with the activists they were targeting.
One of these spies was Boyling, a serving Metropolitan police officer, who was revealed by the Guardian in January to have married an activist he met while undercover in the environmental protest movement, and to have gone on to have children with her.
In the latest twist to his tale, it is alleged that he maintained the charade of being a committed activist when he was prosecuted in Horseferry Road magistrates court in London in 1997 for disorderly behaviour in a three-day trial.
He was among a group of Reclaim the Streets activists who occupied the office of the chairman of London Transport, which ran the capital's tube and rail system.
Official records show that when he was arrested and taken to Charing Cross police station he told police he was "Pete James Sutton", and that his occupation was "cleaner". He signed to say this was correct on the police forms recording his arrest. The date of birth he gave conflicts with the one on other official records.
Under the fictitious identity, he instructed a solicitor from Bindmans to represent him at the police station and in court, according to the law firm.
Bindmans also represented the other activists as they appeared in court five times between September 1996 and January 1997.
When Boyling went into the witness box at the trial, he swore under oath that he was Sutton, and gave evidence under questioning from the barrister for the defendants and the prosecution, according to a legal note of the hearing.
All but one of the activists were acquitted. John Jordan, the activist who was convicted of assaulting a police officer and given a conditional discharge for a year, has launched an appeal to have his conviction quashed.
Jordan, an art lecturer, also alleges that a police officer involved in the case offered to give favourable evidence in court if he became an informer. Jordan says he refused the offer.
His lawyer, Mike Schwarz from Bindmans, said: "This case raises the most fundamental constitutional issues about the limits of acceptable policing, the sanctity of lawyer-client confidentiality, and the integrity of the criminal justice system. At first sight, it seems that the police have wildly overstepped all recognised boundaries."
The Metropolitan police declined to comment.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/oct/19...?fb=optOut