Met Police Agent Provocateurs

[Peter Lemkin]

Cover-Up, is their middle name...

[URL="http://www.ipcc.gov.uk/en/Pages/about_ipcc.aspx"]About the IPCC
[/URL]
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[Jan Klimkowski]

As a reminder of the ridiculously narrow scope of the IPCC investigation, the article below sketches the actitivies of Kennedy/Stone/Flash in at least 11 countries, including : England, USA, France, Germany, Ireland and Iceland.

Did Mark Kennedy make a mystery trip to New York for the FBI?

What was the undercover officer doing in New York in 2008? He claims to have worked for the FBI did you encounter him?

Was Mark Kennedy, the infamous police spy who infiltrated political activists in Europe, also an FBI agent? And can you help us work out what he was doing in New York?

In an interview with Rolling Stone magazine, Kennedy, who spent seven years living as green campaigner 'Mark Stone', claims to have received a special commendation from the United States federal intelligence agency. The FBI declined to comment on the story, but Kennedy provided some tantalising details to the US magazine.


In 2008, with the approval of the US government, Kennedy traveled to New York to spy on a secret meeting of European and American anti-capitalists, including members of the Earth Liberation Front and student activists from Stanford University, who were planning to disrupt the upcoming Republican and Democratic conventions.

Posing as Stone, Kennedy shared his logistical expertise with the assembled activists, not far from where the Occupy movement would later take off. Based on what he saw in New York, though, he did not know what all the fuss was about. "It was a bit of a pointless meeting," he says. He told his superiors that the group, who struck him as young and naive, didn't seem like much of a threat. A French activist suspected of advocating armed revolution was followed as a result of his spying, but no arrests were made.

If you are a US-based activist were you at this so-called 'secret meeting'? Do you recall meeting Kennedy? Or does anyone stateside know how we might find out more about his time there?

Kennedy has a good record of lying and we have been careful in the past to take all of his public prouncements with a pinch of salt. The article, which you read in full here (warning: paywall), he also offers his thoughts on the failings of the Occupy movement, which he reckons is being infiltrated on a "day to day basis", is one of Kennedy's typically one-sided proncouncements.

But the French connection is an intriguing one. An article published in the French magazine Les Inrockuptibles this week alleges intelligence gleaned by Kennedy was passed to the French intelligence services, and proved significant in bringing about the 2008 arrests of the Tarnac Nine. (We wrote about the Tarnac arrests here.)

The article by journalist Camille Polloni also refers to a group of campaigners in New York saying it took place in January 2008. The piece refers to Kennedy attending an impromptu get together of friends (rather than any clandestine rendezvous) with an anarchist associate from England.

We now know that Kennedy turned into something of an agent for hire, infiltrating at least 11 other countries. Recently he admitted to playing an important role in Denmark, while his deployments in Germany, Ireland and Iceland have prompted angry responses from campaigners and parliamentarians.

Previously, nothing was known about his FBI-deployment in the United States. Can you help us find out more?

Email paul.lewis@guardian.co.uk or rob.evans@guardian.co.uk

Source.

[Jan Klimkowski]

Here is the Guardian article (written before the agent provocateur was exposed) about the Tamac Nine, on whom it has recently been alleged that Kennedy/Stone/Flash passed intelligence to the French secret services.

Rural idyll or terrorist hub? The village that police say is a threat to the state

Nine deny anarchist plot, saying they were just seeking the simple life


Angelique Chrisafis in Tarnac, France

The Guardian, Saturday 3 January 2009

High on a bleak mountain plateau in central France, the tiny village of Tarnac is fiercely proud of its grocer's shop. A smiling lady with a perm stands behind the old-fashioned till amid shelves stocked with everything from fly-swats and fairy lights to socks and soya milk. Elderly villagers boast that thanks to the shop, they don't have to leave their cottages to travel miles for bread in this vast, depopulated rural wilderness of central France known as "the desert". Posters advertise tea dances and cinema club screenings of Billy the Kid.

But the French government claims that Tarnac and its small shop are the headquarters of a dangerous cell of anarchist terrorists plotting to overthrow the state. Images of balaclava-clad police swooping to arrest suspects in Tarnac were compared by bewildered villagers to a strange, rural action movie. The government hinted that locals were too gormless to have noticed the terrorist activity in their midst. But after weeks of controversy, supporters are rising up to defend the young people of the village.

Known as the Tarnac Nine, four men and five women aged 22 to 34 are being investigated over far-left terrorism following dawn raids by police in November that targeted several addresses, including a farm with a few goats, chickens and vegetables. Those arrested include a Swiss sitcom actor, a distinguished clarinettist, a student nurse and Benjamin Rosoux, an Edinburgh University graduate who runs the grocer's shop and its adjoining bar-restaurant.

The alleged ringleader, Julien Coupat, 34, is still being held in prison despite a judge's ruling that he be released. A former business and sociology student from an affluent Parisian suburb, Coupat moved to Tarnac in search of a non-consumerist lifestyle, saying he wanted to live frugally. The poor village of 350 people is home to a growing number of young people who have escaped the city for a simple life and sense of community. Together, the newcomers ran the shop, a mobile delivery service, the restaurant, a cinema club and an informal library.

Police said Coupat and his archaeologist girlfriend had been under surveillance for months. The arrests followed six incidents of vandalism on France's high-speed railway lines, which caused delays for thousands of travellers but no casualties. Coupat and his girlfriend had allegedly been seen by police near a train line that was later vandalised.

The couple had come to the attention of the FBI months earlier when they took part in a protest outside an army recruitment centre in New York. They and acquaintances are said to have often travelled to protests and demonstrations such as a recent protest at a European summit on immigration at Vichy.

French police say Coupat was the author of an anonymous tract against capitalism and modern society, The Coming Insurrection. The Paris prosecutor said the group was intent on armed struggle and used the farm in Tarnac as a "meeting point and place of indoctrination" for "violent action". But France's Human Rights League, opposition politicians and intellectuals criticised the arrests as an attack on civil liberties and an abuse of France's draconian anti-terrorist laws. Defence lawyers say there is no evidence for terrorist charges.

Inspired by the indignant villagers of Tarnac, support committees for the Tarnac Nine have sprung up across France and in the US, Spain and Greece. In Moscow, supporters demonstrated outside the French embassy. A national protest is planned in Paris this month. The interior minister, Michèle Alliot-Marie, has been challenged in parliament over the case but insists there are "concrete elements" to support terrorism charges.

In the bar adjoining Tarnac's grocery store, as farmers tucked into their lunch, Jérôme, 28, who moved from the city seeking an alternative lifestyle in Tarnac, said he knew those who had been arrested and had stayed at their farm. "The portrayal of this place has been absurd. The farm is a very collective place and the village has a convivial atmosphere, doors are always open. They say we lived a secretive existence hidden away in the woods. That's not true - the farm is beside the road. They talk of a 'group' when there is no group. They say there was a ringleader ... but there is no boss here, that's an absurdity. It's against our whole thinking."

He said the government was trying to create an idea of an "enemy within", branding all forms of leftwing demonstrations and activism as terrorism.

The government said those arrested did not have mobile phones in order to avoid being detected. Their supporters said there was poor network coverage in the area and they shunned mobile phones as consumerist.

Tarnac sits on the plateau of Millevaches in the northern corner of Corrèze, in rural Limousin, famous for its cattle, poverty and emigration. The surrounding countryside was used by the resistance during the second world war and the village, which for decades had a communist mayor, has long been leftwing.

Across the hill from the farm where Coupat was arrested, Thierry Letellier, the independent mayor of the neighbouring village, tended his sheep farm. He said: "They were my neighbours, helping me on the farm and selling my meat at the shop. They were kind, intelligent and spoke several languages. They were politicised, on the left and clearly anti-capitalist like lots of people here, but they were people active in community life who wanted to change society at a local level first. To say that they were the descendants of Baader-Meinhof or the Red Brigades with no proof, I'm completely against that."

He dismissed the interior minister's claims that it was easy for "terrorists" to move into a remote village where people were not very bright and wouldn't notice. "It's true that members of Eta [the Basque terrorist group] have been found in the area, but they were hidden, they had no support, no one knew them. These people were a key part of our community."

Coupat's well-connected doctor father said the government was using the case to "intimidate youth".

One man, drinking in Tarnac's bar, said: "Did they do something silly or not? It's on the news every night but we're no closer to the truth. I feel we're being manipulated."

Chopping wood outside his house, André Filippin, 65, said: "It's ridiculous. I see them at the shop every day of the year, I help them with their drains, they help me. They are people who came to Corrèze to change their lives, to help people. We don't view them as terrorists here."

[Magda Hassan]

[URL="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/apr/04/mark-kennedy-police"]
Watchdog criticises police over Mark Kennedy's undercover tapes[/URL]

IPCC finds a collective responsibility for failure to disclose undercover officer's recordings to activists

Police have been criticised for their role in withholding crucial surveillance tape recordings made by undercover officer Mark Kennedy.
The tapes were kept from activists who were being prosecuted for planning to occupy one of Britain's largest power stations. The contents of the tapes would have cleared the activists.

In a report published on Wednesday, the Independent Police Complaints Commission said "there was a failing by the police officers and police staff members involved to disclose" the tapes appropriately.

The IPCC began investigating last year after the prosecution of six activists collapsed.

The IPCC said there were collective failings by relevant parties to ensure the tapes were properly disclosed to the activists' lawyers but "the actions of individual police officers and members of police staff did not amount to misconduct".

The IPCC commissioner Len Jackson said: "Our investigation has shown that the sharing and recording of sensitive information, initially between the various officers involved and then with the Crown Prosecution Service, was not well handled … Whilst there were some weaknesses in the manner in which Nottinghamshire police officers and staff carried out their disclosure duties in this case it is our view that none of their actions amount to misconduct."

Kennedy, who infiltrated the environmental movement for seven years using the alias Mark Stone, covertly recorded a private meeting of activists on a £7,000, specially adapted Casio watch.

Nottinghamshire police used the intelligence to arrest more than 100 activists, hours before some of them planned to invade Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station, Nottinghamshire, in April 2009.

Twenty other activists were convicted in December 2010 but their convictions were overturned last summer when appeal court judges ruled that the Kennedy tapes had been withheld from them.

The IPCC report follows a similar inquiry by Sir Christopher Rose, a retired high court judge, who ruled in December that both prosecutors and police had failed to ensure the surveillance recordings made by the undercover police officer were handed over to lawyers representing the activists.

How is this not misconduct?

The quote from Len Jackson reads almost as satire, like something you would see from the Onion.

A total farce.

The police are in fact perverting the course of justice. If it had been any one else except them pulling this little stunt that is indeed what they would have been charged with.

[Jan Klimkowski]

Another one.

This time, allegations of "an undercover spy planting an incendiary device in a department store".

Video clip at the link.

Call for police links to animal rights firebombing to be investigated

MP claims that undercover police officer may have 'crossed the line' during animal rights activists' bombing of department store



Rob Evans and Paul Lewis
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 13 June 2012 13.29 BST

Ministers have been asked to investigate the police infiltration of a cell of animal rights activists responsible for a firebombing campaign after questions were raised about the ethics of an operation that, it was alleged, may have involved an undercover spy planting an incendiary device in a department store.

The MP who raised the case, which dates back to the 1980s but surfaced only after recent disclosures about the clandestine unit of police spies, suggested it may constitute a case in which "a police officer crossed the line into acting as an agent provocateur".

Caroline Lucas, parliament's only Green MP, used a Westminster Hall debate on the rules governing undercover policing to raise the case under parliamentary privilege, and add to calls for a public inquiry into the use of police spies.

Only limited details are known about the mysterious police operation to infiltrate a group of hardcore anti-fur protesters, and Lucas admitted no one could be sure about the precise role played by the undercover police officer, Bob Lambert, who spent years living among the activists having adopted a new identity.

Lambert infiltrated a cell of activists from the Animal Liberation Front (ALF), who detonated three incendiary devices at three Debenhams branches in London in July 1987 as part of a campaign against the sale of fur.

Two activists, Geoff Sheppard and Andrew Clarke, were caught red-handed months later as they prepared for a second wave of arson attacks. They were convicted over the attacks on the stores.

"Sheppard and Clarke were tried and found guilty but the culprit who planted the incendiary device in the Harrow store was never caught," Lucas said. "Bob Lambert's exposure as an undercover police officer has prompted Geoff Sheppard to speak out about that Harrow attack. Sheppard alleges that Lambert was the one who planted the third device and was involved in the ALF's co-ordinated campaign."

The MP relayed comments from Sheppard in which the convicted activist said: "Obviously I was not there when he targeted that store because we all headed off in our separate directions but I was lying in bed that night, and the news came over on the World Service that three Debenhams stores had had arson attacks on them and that included the Harrow store as well.

"So obviously I straight away knew that Bob had carried out his part of the plan. There's absolutely no doubt in my mind whatsoever that Bob Lambert placed the incendiary device at the Debenhams store in Harrow. I specifically remember him giving an explanation to me about how he had been able to place one of the devices in that store, but how he had not been able to place the second device. So it would seem that planting the third incendiary device was perhaps a move designed to bolster Lambert's credibility and reinforce the impression of a genuine and dedicated activist. He did go on to successfully gain the precise intelligence that led to the arrest of Sheppard and Clarke and without anybody suspecting that the tipoff came from him. But is that really the way we want our police officers to behave?"

Lambert, who has admitted having sexual relations with women while operating undercover, has previously spoken about his role in the police investigation of the ALF and his specific role in the operation against Sheppard and Clarke.

However, he firmly denies planting the incendiary device. He told the Guardian: "It was necessary to create the false impression that I was a committed animal rights extremist to gain intelligence so as to disrupt serious criminal conspiracies. However, I did not commit serious crime such as 'planting an incendiary device at the [Debenhams] Harrow store'."

Lucas admitted "we just don't know" exactly how far Lambert may have taken his operation, but said: "Yet, if Sheppard's allegations are true, someone must have authorised Lambert to plant incendiary devices at the Harrow store. Presumably that same someone may also have given the officer guidance on just how far he needed to go to establish his credibility with the ALF."

She added: "There is no doubt in my mind that anyone planting an incendiary device in a department store is guilty of a very serious crime and should have charges brought against them. That means absolutely anyone including, if the evidence is there, Bob Lambert or indeed the people who were supervising him."

Lucas raised the case of Mark Kennedy, who was revealed last year to have spent seven years living undercover among environmental activists. He also had sexual relations with female activists. Kennedy's exposure led the court of appeal to quash the convictions of 20 environmental campaigners wrongly convicted of conspiring to break into a power station. The three judges said they had seen evidence that appeared to show Kennedy had been "arguably, a provocateur".

Lucas said: "The latest allegations concerning Bob Lambert and the planting of incendiary devices would beg the question: has another undercover police officer crossed the line into acting as an agent provocateur? And how many other police spies have been encouraging protesters to commit crimes?"

The MP voiced concerns about other aspects of a longstanding operation to plant spies in protest groups, including the evidence that most of those unmasked in public are suspected of having engaged in sexual relationships with activists. She raised the case of eight women who say they were duped into forming relationships with undercover officers, and who have begun a legal case against police.

She said senior police chiefs had said it was "never acceptable" for their spies to have sexual relations with activists, but the Met had told the women's lawyers that "forming of personal and other relationships" is permitted under Ripa, the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000.

"So either rogue undercover officers have been breaking the rules set by senior officers, or senior officers have misled the public by saying that such relationships are forbidden," Lucas said.

The policing minister, Nick Herbert, acknowledged there were questions about the accountability of long-term spies and said the Home Office was considering how better to regulate the area.

He said ministers were considering proposals from a review of the Kennedy case by Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary, which recommended that future deployments of undercover police officers should be "pre-authorised" by the Office of Surveillance Commissioners.

However, the minister rejected calls for a full public inquiry and conceded that Ripa statutory guidance for undercover police officers did not cover the vexed question of sexual relations. Herbert said he was "not persuaded" that specific guidance was needed on the subject of sexual relations. "To ban such [sexual] actions would provide a ready-made test for the criminal group targeted to find out whether there was an undercover officer deployed amongst them."

The Met said in a statement that, before Wednesday's allegations, it had set up an inquiry into covert work between 1968 and 2008. "This review was set up in October 2011 to review the deployment of undercover officers within the Special Demonstration Squad. Any matters arising from the review will be assessed and where appropriate will be referred to the Independent Police Complaints Commission."

[Peter Lemkin]

Its all incredible and clear to me that if we were to lock up the Police and their agents provocateurs we'd have less crime! :mexican: I'm sure there are many 'Stones' out there in many lands doing many similar things! He, himself, certainly did 'get around'! In the USA much of the 'violence' by the animal rights and other groups are really done by the Police. A few cases of this have been proven....but most judges and prosecutors are either too naive to even think along those lines, or in the know and in the fold and go along.....

[Jan Klimkowski]

Meet the Focker.

All that blubbing on camera about his torn emotions...

Now this dipstick will be paid by a US security firm as a "consultant" on "countering current and developing threats" from protesters.

Mark Kennedy hired as consultant by US security firm

Former police spy provides 'investigative services, risk and threat assessments' for Densus Group
Rob Evans and Paul Lewis

guardian.co.uk, Thursday 21 June 2012 17.29 BST


A former police spy who infiltrated the environmental movement for seven years has been hired by a private security firm in the US to give advice on how to deal with political activists.

Mark Kennedy has become a consultant to the Densus Group, providing "investigative services, risk and threat assessments", according to an entry on his LinkedIn profile.

He says he has given lectures to firms and government bodies drawing on his experiences "as a covert operative working within extreme left political and animal rights groups throughout the UK, Europe and the US".

Kennedy, 42, went to live in Cleveland, Ohio, after he was unmasked by activists in late 2010. He has claimed to have developed sympathies for the activists while undercover, although many campaigners have scorned this claim.

The disclosure of his clandestine deployment has led to a series of revelations over the past 18 months about the 40-year police operation to penetrate and disrupt political groups. The convictions of one group of protesters were quashed after it was revealed that prosecutors and police had withheld key evidence Kennedy's covert recording of campaigners from their trial. A second trial of activists collapsed after it emerged that Kennedy had infiltrated them.

Kennedy was one of a long line of undercover officers since 1968 sent to spy on political activists under a fake identity. He posed as Mark Stone, a long-haired, tattooed campaigner, and took part in many demonstrations between 2003 and 2010. He has admitted sleeping with activists he was spying on, even though police chiefs say this is strictly forbidden.

Even after the police ended his deployment, he continued to pretend he was a campaigner and to fraternise with activists he had known while undercover. In particular, Kennedy developed a sudden interest in animal rights campaigns, according to activists.

After he was exposed, he sold his story to the Mail on Sunday which reported that soon after he left the police he worked for Global Open, a security firm that advises corporations on how to thwart campaigners promoting animal rights and other causes. He denied this in a later interview.

A month before he left the police he set up the first of three commercial firms whose work has not been described. For the past four months he has been working for the Texas-based Densus Group, which advises firms on "countering current and developing threats" from protesters.

A US newspaper obtained a Densus threat assessment that was circulated to businesses before a G20 summit in 2009. In it, Densus is reported to have described planned protests outside the summit as "extreme" and "likely to be the most violent event of the week".

Sam Rosenfeld, the chair of the group, said: "Mr Kennedy's history is unparalleled in being able to share his experiences of legal and illegal protest techniques perspectives critical in understanding where the real risks, threats and opportunities lie. Like all Densus consultants, Mr Kennedy's involvement promotes the facilitation and effectiveness of legal protest and forewarns the likely victims of violence and criminal damage."

Rosenfeld said his company "promotes the facilitation of legal protest and prevents over- or under-reaction that could escalate a situation unnecessarily, thereby hampering effective free speech."

Earth First! have noticed.

Very wise.

[Jan Klimkowski]

Source, with photos of "Mark Kennedy lookin' all cleaned up" at the link.

Ex-police spy Mark Kennedy's current business activities in the US
12Jun



According to a recent post on Indymedia UK, Mark Kennedy, who was exposed as a police infiltrator of various movements in the UK and beyond in October 2010, is still actively seeking to operate as a private consultant. He appears to be based in the US, although this is not certain.

Kennedy is advertising himself on "LinkedIn", and his profile can be viewed here.

An extract from this profile is listed here…. "I have many years experience in covert operations and deployments, intelligence gathering, analysis and dissemination, statement taking, investigations and case preparation, evidential court apperances, surveillance and counter-surveillance skills and the use of technical covert, recording equipment.

I have lectured for law enforcement agencies and services regarding infiltration tactics and covert deployments and have lectured for the private sector regarding risk management, the threat from extremist and protest groups and creating preventative protocols.

My exeperience is drawn from 20 years as a British Police officer, the last ten of which were deployed as a covert operative working within extreme left political and animal rights groups throughout the UK, Europe and the US providing exacting intelligence upon which risk and threat assessment analysis could be made.

That knowledge and experience is now drawn upon to provide expert consultation to the public / private sectors to provide investigative services, deliver informative lectures and training, provide risk and threat assessments to companies, corporations and their staff from the threat of direct action in all its forms. It is my intention to provide a enhance a better understanding of protest, the reasons why protest takes place and the subsequent appropriate management of protest and to assist in employing the appropriate pre-emptive policing and security considerations to mass mobilisations, protest and direct action as well as real time analysis and responces and to provide post event debriefing to staff effected by direct action."

The profile indicates Kennedy is based in Cleveland, Ohio, USA.

The profile also reveals that in January 2010, shortly before leaving the
police, he set up a company called "Stanage Consulting".

Stanage Consulting are registered at
SUITE 2029
6 SLINGTON HOUSE
RANKINE ROAD
BASINGSTOKE
ENGLAND
RG24 8PH

This address is simply a forwarding service. See the following site:
http://www.my-uk-mail.co.uk/frequentlyas...stions.htm

This forwarding service also hosted another company set up by Kennedy called "Tokra", linked to "Global Open", which has since been dissolved - for background on this see here

The other company listed by Kennedy on his LinkedIn profile is US- based "risk managers" Densus Group, for whom, since March 2012, he has acted as a consultant see http://www.densusgroup.com

To quote from the LinkedIn page again "The Densus Group provides a range of specialty consultancy and training, primarily on behalf of government institutions and private firms in respect of risk analysis and threat assessment from protest groups and domestic extremism."

The Densus Group was very interested in the policing of the Pittsburgh G20 summit protests, and is generally trying to sell its services to corporate clients concerned with combating the US Occupy movement and similar groups.

Thus, it seems that Kennedy is attempting to establish himself as a private consultant for corporate agencies, presumably especially in the US, where he seems to be based (despite a UK-based forwarding business address). Activists in the US (and elsewhere) should be aware of this.


Kennedy definitely worked in the USA. The passport that uncovered him had a valid American work visa stamped in it. What other work could he have been doing? As a police officer, presumably it would be working for the state sector rather than private.

A comment on the UK Indymedia article included this: A listing of his known movements put together by those who worked with him says he was in New York in January 2008.

[Magda Hassan]

It's important police are allowed to rape activists.

Nick Herbert: "It's important police are allowed to have sex with activists."

- last updated Wed 13 Jun 2012

• UK
  
• Caroline Lucas
  
• Undercover Police
  

Nick Herbert, Home Office Minister, MP for Arundel & South Downs Photo: PAUndercover police officers can start sexual relationships with suspected criminals if it means they are more plausible, Home Office Minister and Sussex MP Nick Herbert said today.
He said that under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA), officers were permitted to have sex as part of their job but the legislation meant the operations were strictly managed.
There had been confusion about whether undercover police were allowed to go that far following the collapse of a case against environmental activists in Nottinghamshire after it emerged the group was infiltrated by an officer called Mark Kennedy, who had been in sexual relationships with two women in the campaign.
Today, Mr Herbert said it was important police were allowed to have sex with activists because otherwise it could be used as a way of outing potential undercover officers.
Speaking in a debate in Westminster Hall, Mr Herbert said: "In very limited circumstances, authorisation under Ripa Part 2 may render unlawful conduct with the criminal if it is consentutory conduct falling within the Act that the source is authorised to undertake.
"But this would depend on the circumstances of each individual case and consideration should always be given to seeking legal advice.
"I am not persuaded that it would be necessary to introduce specific statutory guidance on the circumstances of sexual relationships under Ripa.
"I think what matters is that there is a general structure and system of proper oversight and control rather than very specific instructions as to what may or may not be permitted.
"Of course, there is another point that banning such actions would provide the group targeted the opportunity to find out whether there was an undercover officer specifically within their group."
But Caroline Lucas, the leader of the Green Party and MP for Brighton Pavilion*, *who is calling for a public inquiry into the conduct of undercover officers, said this meant that, while the police needed a warrant to enter your home, they did not need any authorisation to start a relationship.
She accused the police of failing to take seriously the legal claims of eight women who said their lives had been devastated by the intrusion of undercover police officers.
Ms Lucas said officers had "crossed the line", adding that the case of Mark Kennedy - who went under the alias Mark Stone during his time infiltrating a group that attempted to take over Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station in Nottinghamshire - had "shone a light" on the practices of subterfuge used by the police.
She said: "We need to know what the truth is and we need any rules of engagement to be published and open to public and parliamentary scrutiny or challenge."
http://www.itv.com/news/meridian/2012-06...activists/

[Jan Klimkowski]

The dictionary defintion of agent provocateur.

Police spy Mark Kennedy accused of fake claims in French case

Leaked documents suggest former undercover officer is behind allegations that French activists practised making bombs


Angelique Chrisafis, Rob Evans and Paul Lewis
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 8 November 2012 15.02 GMT

The former British police spy Mark Kennedy is being accused of making fake claims after leaked documents indicated he was the source behind claims that French activists were learning to make homemade bombs.

Ten French leftwing activists are under investigation over an alleged terror plot to overthrow the state in a case that has convulsed France and drawn criticism from human rights lawyers.

Leaked documents seen by the Guardian reveal how claims against some of the activists, including the suggestion they discussed and "practised" building improvised explosive devices (IED)s, came from the British police unit Kennedy worked for.

The French authorities are not pursuing charges on this element of the inquiry. Instead, the activists are under formal investigation for allegedly sabotaging high-speed train lines with metal hooks, after damage to lines in November 2008 caused delays for thousands but no casualties. Accused of targeting the SNCF railway as the ultimate symbol of the French state, they deny all charges against them.

Kennedy, a police spy who used the alias Mark Stone during the seven years he was undercover, met French campaigners at least twice; once in the south of France and again in New York.

He is a discredited figure in the UK, where he has admitted to having sexual relationships with female activists.

His bungled operations led to the quashing of 20 convictions against activists and there are more potential miscarriages currently under review. Senior judges said he had arguably been acting as an agent provocateur.

Kennedy's role in the inquiry into the French anti-capitalists could jeopardise what is the most high-profile legal case on leftist activism in recent years. It is known as the "Tarnac affair" after more than a hundred French police in balaclavas swooped on the tiny rural village of Tarnac in November 2008, arresting anti-capitalists who were living on a communal farm and running a village shop. In a vast media operation, Nicolas Sarkozy's government and French authorities alleged they were a cell of dangerous subversives intent on anarchist armed insurrection to overthrow the state.

Those arrested included a Swiss sitcom actor, a distinguished clarinettist and an Edinburgh University graduate. French authorities accused a business and sociology graduate named Julien Coupat of being the group's "ringleader" and ideologue, saying he had written a key text, The Coming Insurrection. At the time socialists and human rights groups criticised the handling of the case and accused the government of exaggerating notions of a leftist "enemy within" for political gain.

It has now emerged that British police chiefs have been assisting French prosecutors building a case against the campaigners.

Responding to a request from French authorities for help with the case, Detective Chief Inspector Richard May wrote "United Kingdom law enforcement units are able to confirm that information is available" that Coupat was at a meeting in Nancy, a city in north-east France, in February 2008.

May, stationed in Scotland Yard's national domestic extremism unit, which was Kennedy's employer, added: "Later that same day the meeting moved to a location in a village called Moussey, France. During these meetings, the making of improvised explosive devices was both discussed and practised." Two other activists were named as being present at the meetings.

A month earlier, Kennedy met some activists at a meeting of international anarchists in New York.

May's letter added: "United Kingdom law enforcement units are able to state that information is available that Julien Coupat was present at a meeting in New York, USA, between 12 and 13 January 2008."

May also told the French prosecutors that the "source of this intelligence will never be revealed and no formal statements will be provided".

Lawyers for the Tarnac activists rejected the claims made in the British police document. They believe the New York claim was central to French police opening a preliminary inquiry into the Tarnac group in early 2008 which they said was based on "extremely weak and inconsistent" information.

Kennedy has himself previously claimed that in 2008 he witnessed French activists practising making explosives. He has also admitted to providing intelligence about the New York meeting, which he dismissed as "a bit pointless".

The spy did, however, add that he provided intelligence that resulted in the FBI following a French activist suspected of advocating armed revolution, now believed to be Coupat.

Others present at the meeting were a Japanese activist, another French campaigner and some Americans.

One attendee of the New York meeting told the Guardian the group had general discussions about how to mobilise radical political action in the US.

They discussed how there was a lack of social spaces to organise political action and how best to handle the media, debates which were common in the months leading up to the Occupy movement.

"There was absolutely no discussion about armed revolution or anything remotely like that," the activist said.

Kennedy left the police in March 2010 before a disastrous attempt to return to his undercover life using his fake identity ended in activists unmasking him. He is now working for the Densus Group, a US private security firm advising corporations on how to deal with the "threat" of political activism.

The allegation that Kennedy had made manipulative claims has been made by William Bourdon, the lawyer representing the French activists. This week he wrote to the investigating judge in charge of the case demanding clarification of Kennedy's role. He wants access to all intelligence reports which he said had deliberately been hidden from the defence.

"The use of an individual like Mark Kennedy is an extremely serious problem for the state of law, and dangerous for democracy," Bourdon said.

"What is serious is that agents like Mark Kennedy can be used to a perverse effect, they can be put in a position which results in exaggeration and dramatisation, feeding the complicitous ears of authorities who need that dramatisation to justify a case."

Kennedy is known to have used his fake passport to travel abroad more than 40 times. Mostly, he was requested by foreign police forces who asked for assistance monitoring campaigners in their country.

In total, he visited 11 countries while working undercover and claims to have received a commendation from the FBI for his work in New York.

But his activities are the subject of ongoing scrutiny in many of the countries he visited, including Ireland, Iceland and Denmark.

There are particular concerns about his deployments in Germany, where he was twice arrested, once for committing an arson attack.

London's Metropolitan police, which is responsible for both Kennedy and May, said in statement that it would not comment on "specific deployments" but had pledged to reform its approach to undercover policing following the conclusions of an inquiry.

Kennedy could not be contacted for a comment.