Success for British Justice

Tim Holmes — Mon, 31 Jul 2006 18:44:41 +0000

It was another resounding success for British justice. Mr Justice Eady granted a permanent injunction against David Shayler in the High Court today (Friday 28 July). In a breathtaking ruling, Eady stated that David was not entitled to present evidence or cross-examine his accusers (again), but instead issued a summary judgement based on assertions made by MI5.

This means that David can now only talk about a restricted range of disclosures specifically what appeared in the Mail on Sunday on 24 August 1997. This means that he cannot talk about a whole range of topics which are in the public domain and have already been cleared via the injunction and for the publication of my book, Spies, Lies and Whistleblowers.

Specifically, this means that, while I and the rest of the world can talk about state-sponsored false-flag terrorism, including the Gaddafi plot, David is banned. Very convenient when the 911 campaign is taking off.

The temporary injunction was issued in September 1997 on the explicit understanding that a full legal hearing would be needed before it could be made permanent. David has now been denied this.

Also, the injunction has been abused repeatedly, for example allowing the government to spin lies against him when he wished to reveal the wrongful conviction of two innocent Palestinians, Samar Alami and Jawad Botmeh, for the bombing of the Israeli embassy in London in 1994. Also, when he tried to alert the government to murder and a major terrorist attack organised by MI6 officers in the Gaddafi plot, he did so legally via the injunction.

For his pains, he was the one thrown in prison in Paris in 1998.

The injunction has also repeatedly been used to intimidate journalists (one of whom was tried and convicted) and to stop the media investigating the criminality of MI5 and MI6. With this ruling, the judge has also abolished at one stroke the media’s right to publish whistleblowers’ testimony if they can argue it caused no damage to national security.

If any future whistleblower emerges from the intelligence services, and is injuncted, the media has lost this defence, enshrined by parliament in criminal law (Section 1.5 of the OSA). And why is an injunction necessary anyway? There already exists a criminal sanction under the Official Secret Act. The judge was kind enough to say that the injunction was for Davids own good and would stop him having to break the OSA again! We are through the looking glass.

Yours in wonderland. Annie

MI5 Whistleblower Back in Court

Tim Holmes — Fri, 28 Jul 2006 13:24:31 +0000

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 MI5s 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 services 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 Britains security are really doing all they can to protect us.

Whistleblowers should be protected not prosecuted.

Annie Machon | ukwatch.net

Success for British Justice

MI5 Whistleblower Back in Court