Met Police Agent Provocateurs

[Jan Klimkowski]

Article from the 2009 G20 protests in London:

G20 police 'used undercover men to incite crowds'

MP demands inquiry into Met tactics at demo

Jamie Doward and Mark Townsend The Observer, Sunday 10 May 2009

An MP who was involved in last month's G20 protests in London is to call for an investigation into whether the police used agents provocateurs to incite the crowds.

Liberal Democrat Tom Brake says he saw what he believed to be two plain-clothes police officers go through a police cordon after presenting their ID cards.

Brake, who along with hundreds of others was corralled behind police lines near Bank tube station in the City of London on the day of the protests, says he was informed by people in the crowd that the men had been seen to throw bottles at the police and had encouraged others to do the same shortly before they passed through the cordon.

Brake, a member of the influential home affairs select committee, will raise the allegations when he gives evidence before parliament's joint committee on human rights on Tuesday.

"When I was in the middle of the crowd, two people came over to me and said, 'There are people over there who we believe are policemen and who have been encouraging the crowd to throw things at the police,'" Brake said. But when the crowd became suspicious of the men and accused them of being police officers, the pair approached the police line and passed through after showing some form of identification.

Brake has produced a draft report of his experiences for the human rights committee, having received written statements from people in the crowd. These include Tony Amos, a photographer who was standing with protesters in the Royal Exchange between 5pm and 6pm. "He [one of the alleged officers] was egging protesters on. It was very noticeable," Amos said. "Then suddenly a protester seemed to identify him as a policeman and turned on him. He *legged it towards the police line, flashed some ID and they just let him through, no questions asked."

Amos added: "He was pretty much inciting the crowd. He could not be called an observer. I don't believe in conspiracy theories but this really struck me. Hopefully, a review of video evidence will clear this up."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/...ovacateurs

Nothing seems to have come of the MP's complaints.

However, Stone/Kennedy was involved as an infiltrator in protests at the EU Summit in Dublin, as follows:

An undercover British agent encouraged protesters to attack Irish police officers at an EU summit in Dublin, the Guardian newspaper has reported.

The undercover policeman Mark Kennedy did more than just observe and was an active participant in the proceedings, according to the newspaper.

The militant anti-capitalist protestors that were at the summit, which marked the accession of eastern European states to the union, are saying that Kennedy made visits to Dublin to help train protesters and encouraged other activists to attackthe police, raising further questions about his role as an undercover officer and supports claims he acted as an agent provocateur.

(snip)

Anti-capitalist activists believed Kennedy to be a fellow protester named Mark Stone during the violent clash between demonstrators and the Irish police riot squad in Dublin's Phoenix Park on May Day 2004. The area around the park was sealed off by a large security cordon as police sought to protect the EU heads of states in Dublin for the ceremony at the Irish president's residence. While most of the demonstrators were peaceful, about 500 attacked the gardaí.

Said one of the protesters on Kennedy's actions on the day: "I saw him taking off his balaclava as he was coming out of the crowd. I was amazed that someone would stand close to police lines and take his mask off."

It was evident before the protest that police had intelligence on the activities of the activists who had travelled across the Irish Sea from Britain, suggesting that they had an informant in the protest movement. A police unit from the Pearse Street station arrested several people after smashing its way into a flat on Leeson Street in Dublin occupied by English anarchists.

"Some people arrested from the UK were kept here for two months but he did not get nicked for that. He was one of the people who were encouraging a confrontation with the garda up at the Parkgate," said an activist who played host to Kennedy.

http://www.irishcentral.com/news/British...40214.html

Tom Brake MP should now be asking the Met to identify the police agent provocateurs active at the G20 summit. And Guardian hacks should be using their protest movement sources to idnetify them independently.

I'm not holding my breath....