German MPs Demand Answers About UK Spycops

Andrej Hunko (left) and Hans-Christian Stroebele

Two German MPs have written to their government demanding answers about activities of British undercover police in their country.

Andrej Hunko and Hans-Christian Stroebele’s letter to the Ministers of Justice and the Interior was sent yesterday.

Hunko tweeted the text of the letter (it may only be an excerpt):

To the German Ministers for Justice and the interior:

• The government should ask the British authorities, who ordered and took responsibility for Kennedy’s operations in Berlin.
• The Interior Ministry, and the German Federal Criminal Police as the international contact for exchange of undercover police, should obtain details if Mark Kennedy (or other British police) also practiced illegal sexuality or had emotional bonds outside the obligations of their duties.
• If applicable, those residing in Germany must be informed about possibilities of seeking legal redress in Germany, and about civil litigation options in the UK.
• The British undercover officers and their police managers must disclose how far the operations in Germany (for example in the regional states of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Baden-Weurttemberg or Berlin) used the support of listening technologies to record conversations, and on which legal basis this occurred.
• According to a report in the British daily newspaper the Guardian from 24 September 2014, at least 56 were falsely convicted due to the activities of undercover police officers. This also involved operations by Mark Kennedy. The Interior Ministry and Federal Criminal Police must investigate, with all relevant regional state authorities, whether the activities of the British police may have led to false convictions.

Only twelve officers from the British political secret police units have been exposed so far – less than 10% of the true total. Of these, three are confirmed as having worked in Germany.

Mark Kennedy was deployed to the country numerous times, and Peter Francis and Marco Jacobs also visited. This means there were officers from both the Special Demonstration Squad and the National Public Order Intelligence Unit in Germany over a period of 15 years.

Whilst in Germany, Kennedy committed arson and was arrested twice, illegally going through the system under a false name. He is also known to have engaged in sexual relationships with women he spied on.

Now that the British state admits that undercover officers deceiving women into intimate relationships was a breach of the womens’ human rights, it puts additional pressure on all governments to investigate what happened.

With just a handful of officers publicly known, it’s already certain that these British state agents committed human rights abuses in Ireland, Germany, Spain, Denmark, Israel, Iceland, Greece, the Netherlands, Thailand, Italy and Vietnam.

As Hunko and Stoebele’s letter demanding answers from not just the German authorities but the British too, it increases the pressure for the Pitchford inquiry to play its proper part.

Spying abroad was clearly a significant element of the work of Britain’s political secret police. Their disgraced behaviour and offences against citizens are just as serious whether committed in Bermondsey or Berlin.

As in Scotland, the increasing pressure for a proper inquiry – and for the British government to provide answers – is coming not just from from activists but also from MPs of more than one party. This groundswell makes it increasingly apparent that the public inquiry’s proposed limit to events in England and Wales is untenable.