MI5 whistleblower David Shayler returned to the High Courts of Justice on Thursday, 27th July to fight another government attempt to win a permanent injunction against him.

The terms of the proposed gagging order will ensure that he can no longer speak out about the many crimes of MI5 and MI6 that he personally witnessed. It will ban him from speaking about a number of serious incidents, such as MI6’s illegal funding of Al Qaeda to assassinate Colonel Gaddafi of Libya in 1996 – information which has been in the public domain world-wide since 1998, and which MI5 itself has already cleared for publication.

Background

David Shayler worked for MI5’s political and counter-terrorism departments in the 1990s. He was so disgusted by the crimes and incompetence of MI5 that he left and went on the record about the service’s failings. Ministers have consistently refused to take his sworn evidence. Instead, they have used the Official Secrets Act and a temporary injunction, issued in September 1997, to stop journalists from investigating his disclosures. This has led to a life on the run, exile in Paris, his voluntary return to the UK in 2000, a 2-year court case and two spells in prison.

The initial allegations: Files on Labour ministers, civil liberties activists, pop groups etc; illegal telephone taps; drinking culture in MI5 and MI6; the failed management culture in MI5.

Subsequent allegations made through legal channels:
The mistakes made by MI5 in the run-up to the Israeli Embassy bombing in London in 1994. MI5 then allowed two Palestinians to be wrongfully convicted of the attack.
The case of IRA bombs going off in Tyneside in 1993 because of failures on the part of MI5 and police Special Branch. MI5 then lied to government.

The Gaddafi plot – when two MI6 officers operated outside government control and paid an Islamic extremist group in Libya with links to Al Qaeda to assassinate Colonel Gaddafi; the attack went wrong and killed innocent civilians. A police investigation has established that Robin Cook’s assertions that this allegation is “pure fantasy” are at best misleading.
The mistakes that led to the Bishopsgate attack in London in 1993.

A temporary injunction was granted in September 1997 against David and The Mail on Sunday newspaper. The action was dropped against the newspaper, but only stayed against David. The proposed permanent injunction will ban David from discussing ever again any but the initial disclosures, even though the subsequent disclosures were cleared by MI5 for the publication last year of my book, Spies, Lies and Whistleblowers.

In a world where our country is taken into an illegal war on flawed evidence, where people in the UK can be imprisoned without trial on the word of the intelligence services, and where the threat of terrorist attack is a daily fear, we need to know that those responsible for Britain’s security are really doing all they can to protect us.

Whistleblowers should be protected not prosecuted.