Amnesty International has joined the struggle for justice in the spycops scandal, backing a legal case by victims to get the public inquiry into Britain’s political secret police extended to cover Northern Ireland.

When the Undercover Policing Inquiry’s remit was announced three years ago, campaigners were shocked to see it was limited to:

‘undercover police operations conducted by English and Welsh police forces in England and Wales since 1968’

Though the Inquiry will cover operations starting in 1968, when the Special Demonstration Squad was formed, it will nonetheless ignore much of the spycops’ activity. A large proportion of the known undercover officers went beyond England and Wales – most of the independently profiled officers were in Scotland and several in Northern Ireland (as well as 15 other countries beyond the UK government’s jurisdiction).

The German government formally requested inclusion in the UK inquiry in 2016. In September 2017, Irish MEP Lynn Boylan hosted an event at the European Parliament which not only covered British spycops abroad but also the array of unaccountable political police officers crossing borders. It is possible that these efforts could be building towards future cases coming to the European Court of Justice.

Whilst in all these places, the spycops engaged in many of the shocking activities that the inquiry is supposed to examine. There are many officers who were there whilst deceiving women into intimate relationships, something the Metropolitan Police has conceded is an abuse of police power and a violation of human rights.

SPYCOPS AROUND THE UK

Though the complaints from Germany and other places outside the UK lie beyond the power of the Undercover Policing Inquiry to rule on, there is no excuse for excluding Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Spycops didn’t just extend their abuses from England and Wales into these places, they also got involved in some specific local issues. In Northern Ireland at least one Special Demonstration Squad officer, Mark Jenner, visited to get in to Irish politics and was involved in a confrontation with police officers in 1995.

The Police Service of Northern Ireland says it appears police there were unaware of Jenner’s presence, and that the Met sent him in without any co-ordination of briefing from local officers.

The Police Service of Northern Ireland has described the SDS decision to do this as:

‘an act of madness’

Given the Special Demonstration Squad had an officer, Rick Gibson, taking active organisational roles in the Troops Out Movement twenty years earlier in the 1970s, it seems likely that Jenner wasn’t the first of their spycops to be involved in Irish politics.

The public inquiry cannot fulfil its purpose by only looking at part of the facts. It cannot be right that human rights abuses in England and Wales warrant a full public inquiry while the same acts by the same officers in Scotland and Northern Ireland get no answers or redress.

FIGHTING FOR INCLUSION IN SCOTLAND

The pressure for inclusion has been strong in Scotland, where Neil Findlay MSP has initiated two parliamentary debates on the subject. This culminated in repeated formal requests by the Scottish government – supported by every party in the parliament – for the Home Office to include the country in the Inquiry.

After the initial refusal from the Home Office, the Scottish government ordered a review of spycops in Scotland by HM Inspectorate of Constabulary in Scotland. This body of career police officers is not independent which, coupled with the review having a narrow remit, meant that spycops’ victims boycotted the whole process.

The HMICS report was published in February 2018 and, as expected, it was a whitewash. On the basis of its conclusions, the Scottish government has decided not to have its own spycops inquiry. This makes it all the more import to get Scotland included in the main public inquiry process. Without this, we will never know the truth about political undercover policing in Scotland.

Two spied-upon activists have launched legal challenges to the imbalance, separately securing the right to a judicial review of then-Home Secretary Theresa May’s decision to exclude Scotland and Northern Ireland.

In Scotland, Tilly Gifford was initially denied legal aid because the case supposedly ‘had no merit’.

She crowdfunded the costs and won the right to a judicial review yet was still refused legal aid until persistent campaiging forced the Scottish Legal Aid Board to grant it last month.

FIGHTING FOR INCLUSION IN NORTHERN IRELAND

In Northern Ireland, Jason Kirkpatrick has brought a case for a judicial review in Belfast. He had an easier time than Gifford in getting to court but since then – as with other spycops victims in every legal process on their issue – he has been faced with governmental delay tactics.

In February 2017 the Belfast High Court ruled that a call to extend the UCPI to Northern Ireland should go to full Judicial Review within the next few months, but delays by the NI Secretary of State office and the Home Office have dragged the process out.

After a year with no action in the case, last week Amnesty publicly called on the Home Secretary and Secretary of State for Northern Ireland to act now and extend the public inquiry.

‘Northern Ireland must not be left behind due to the ongoing absence of government ministers advocating in our interests.

‘Activities of undercover police were not limited to England and Wales, so nor should the inquiry. Two previous Justice Ministers have called for the extension of the Inquiry which we believe must now happen urgently.’

Kirkpatrick told Radio Foyle about the counter-democratic policing he’d been subjected to:

‘In 2005 I met this undercover officer, Mark Kennedy, in Dublin. He travelled around with me and others, he paid for the trip. We drove from Dublin to the west of the Republic and then on up to Belfast, giving lectures about environmental issues and so forth. In Belfast we were at the City Church, a cross-community church. I became his friend, we were very close friends I thought, for five years.’

Kirkpatrick told the Belfast Telegraph:

‘The operations and depth of the deception by the police who spied on me was not limited to England and Wales and so neither should the investigation. Our rights must be upheld. I’ve been fighting for what’s right on this case since 2010 and it’s time the Government stop doing everything in its power to prevent justice.’

Amnesty’s Northern Ireland Campaigns Manager, Grainne Teggart, added:

‘Victims, such as Jason, should not have to take to the courts to have their rights realised. Those affected deserve nothing less than the truth around covert operations that violated trust, privacy and intimacy.’

Dates for the judicial reviews in Northern Ireland and Scotland have yet to be set. But given that the Undercover Policing Inquiry is still working through its preliminary issues, there is still time for the Home Office to extend the geographical boundaries of its remit.

Britain’s political secret police didn’t stop at national borders, so neither can a credible, thorough inquiry into their deeds.

Jason Kirkpatrick & Kate Wilson were both spied on by Mark Kennedy. Belfast High Court, 7 February 2017

A judge at Belfast High Court gave permission yesterday for a Judicial Review of the Home Secretary’s insistence that the Pitchford Undercover Policing Inquiry (UCPI) should not consider activities of police spies in Northern Ireland.

The case was brought by Jason Kirkpatrick, an anti-globalisation activist who is a Core Participant in the UCPI because he was spied on by Mark Kennedy in England.

However, Kennedy also spent more significant time spying on Kirkpatrick in Scotland, Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland and Germany. He has been told that although he can give evidence on that to the Pitchford inquiry if he wants, it will not be followed up, and it will not be included in the Undercover Policing Inquiry report because the terms of reference only cover England and Wales.

His legal representatives, Darragh Macken from KRW Law and Ben Emmerson and Jude Bunting of Doughty Street, argued that it is absurd for Pitchford to investigate the activities of officers such as Mark Kennedy in England and Wales but for that investigation to simply stop at the border when he enters Northern Ireland and restart again when he gets back to England or Wales.

This argument has been supported by two different Northern Irish Ministers of Justice who have written to the Home Secretary stating that it is ‘imperative‘ that the inquiry be able to follow the evidence of the activities of undercover officers working for UK units such as the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) and the National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU) if they are found to have crossed into Northern Ireland.

The court then heard that the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) have now been told by the Metropolitan Police in London that officers from the SDS and NPOIU entered Northern Ireland on a number of occasions and also spied on the families of people murdered in Northern Ireland.

At least one Northern Irish family has already been approached by the Metropolitan Police to inform them officers from the SDS attended demonstrations supporting their campaign, and another family will be contacted soon.

PSNI’s Assistant Chief Constable Mark Hamilton says they were ‘completely blind’ to the fact that that undercover officers from these controversial undercover units were even entering Northern Ireland, let alone spying on political activists there. This raises serious questions about authorisation and accountability, as well as the dangers officers put themselves and others in. Hamilton described the deployments as ‘an act of madness’.

The PSNI have now reviewed thousands of documents provided by the Met relating to activities of these officers in Northern Ireland of which, they say, they were previously unaware, and there is still a lot of material to review. They warned that there is a possibility some of those activities may have implications for legacy investigations into the Troubles. Because of this, the PSNI has also written to the Home Secretary to say that the terms of reference of the Pitchford Inquiry must be opened up to include Northern Ireland.

Ben Emmerson QC bluntly accused the Home Office of taking a ‘brass monkey attitude’ of ‘see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil – just turn a blind eye’ and described their decision-making process as ‘hopeless… flawed from the top to bottom and frankly embarrassingly bad’.

For their part, counsel for the Home Secretary appeared to have little to say, although they did claim that there is no need to expand the terms of reference. Apparently they believe the Pitchford Inquiry was not set up to consider ‘every specific incident’, and that the terms of reference only require it to look at ‘more general, systemic issues’, for which, counsel claimed, a few examples of incidents from England and Wales would be sufficient.

Letters from the Home Office also indicated that the ‘particular history of Northern Ireland’ means that extending the investigation to Northern Ireland could be ‘costly’ and is ‘not in the public interest’.

The judge, Mr Justice Maguire, seemed to disagree, and granted leave to have a full Judicial Review, which will take place in about 10 weeks’ time.

He commented that perhaps, in the future, the Home Office will be able to provide compelling reasons why they should not open the inquiry up to include this jurisdiction. They certainly did not manage to do so yesterday.

All this raises the question of Scottish inclusion in the Pitchford Inquiry. The majority of known spycops were in Scotland. Every party in the Scottish Parliament backed their government’s call to be covered by the Inquiry, but the Home Office refused.

The Scottish government responded by commissioning a whitewash from HM Inspectorate of Constabulary in Scotland. This self-investigation by police, including those implicated in undercover work, could scarcely be less credible, even before the government restricted it to only looking at the last few years of police spying.

It has been derided by campaigners who insist that if abuses are serious enough to warrant a proper public inquiry in England and Wales then they must not be ignored elsewhere. Scottish eyes will be watching Belfast in ten weeks’ time.

The German government have formally asked to be included in the forthcoming Pitchford inquiry into undercover policing. Five officers from Britain’s political secret police units are known to have been in the country.

Special Demonstration Squad whistleblower Peter Francis says he was the first officer to work abroad when he was sent to an anti-racist gathering in Bavaria in 1995. Francis was accompanied by his handler who stayed in a nearby hotel – the infamous former officer turned overseer Bob Lambert. The recently exposed officer known as RC is also reported to have been in Germany around ten years after Francis.

Mark Kennedy was also a frequent visitor to the country, and in 2007 went with fellow officer Marco Jacobs. Kennedy was arrested in 2006 in Berlin for arson after setting fire to a dumpster, and again at an anti-G8 protest in 2007. He gave his false name to authorities which – along with arson, of course – is a crime in Germany.

Like the Scottish government’s similar request, the German demand follows years of sustained effort by parliamentarians from the left-wing and Green parties. Tenacious parliamentarian Andrej Hunko has been working on this since Kennedy was first uncovered, and this week he welcomed his government’s call and spelled out the seriousness and breadth of the issue.

SCOTLAND WAITS AND WAITS

The forthcoming Pitchford inquiry is planning to only examine actions of spycops in England and Wales. As the majority of exposed officers were active in Scotland (and Scottish chief constable Phil Gormley had oversight of both spycops units at the key time) it is patently absurd to exclude Scotland from the inquiry.

Despite their government formally asking to be included last year, and even Tories demanding Theresa May accede, there has been no real response. It has been six months now, yet we have merely been told time and again that “talks are ongoing”.

With the preliminary sessions of the inquiry mostly over, it is starting to look like the Home Office is simply stalling and that the lack of a response will effectively become a refusal once the inquiry begins.

For their part, two representatives of the inquiry fielded questions at the recent conference hosted by the Monitoring Group and Centre for Crime and Justice Studies. They told those attending that it would be nonsense to exclude part of an officer’s story just because it happened abroad, and the inquiry would want the full picture.

Whilst this is some comfort, it is far from good enough. Firstly, the spoken assurance of underlings is very different to the declared decision of the Chair.

More importantly, it avoids many of the real issues. Spying abroad raises questions far beyond the officers’ own stories. Who organised it? Who decided their remit and purpose? How much did the host country know? Who is responsible for crimes committed by officers whilst abroad?

Peter Francis says SDS officers were given

absolutely zero schooling in any law whatsoever. I was never briefed, say for example, if I was in Germany I couldn’t do, this for example, engage in sexual relationships or something else.

NORTHERN IRELAND ALSO IN THE QUEUE

The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) says police weren’t even told that spycops were being deployed there. Yet German police confirmed to Andrej Hunko that Mark Kennedy was directed and paid by German police. Which operations were done which way, and why?

That mention of ignorance is the first official comment from police about spycops being in Northern Ireland. SDS officer Mark Jenner was there in August 1995 fighting with nationalists in a violent clash with the loyalist Apprentice Boys of Derry march.

This week PSNI’s Assistant Chief Constable Mark Hamilton told the BBC that nobody in the Northern Ireland police was ever aware the SDS were there, nor of any information being passed to them from the SDS.

With myriad other undercover operations going on in Northern Ireland during the conflict, to have sent Met officers in seems dangerously blase at best. Hamilton said

risk assessments have to be carried out. Anybody who’s deployed here without those assessments would be, in my view, an act of madness.

It seems hard to believe the SDS were so cavalier as to send their officers blundering in like that. Perhaps their contacts in the Northern Irish police aren’t admitting anything. Perhaps the SDS was working with some other arm of the British state. Or maybe this really is another area where the SDS simply didn’t think about the possible impacts on the people it worked among.

All this only refers to the SDS in Northern Ireland. Mark Kennedy, of the National Public Order Intelligence Unit, was active in Belfast in 2008. He was there with activist Jason Kirkpatrick who has had confirmation that the Northern Irish government has also asked to be included in the Pitchford inquiry.

ALL IRELAND SPYING

Kennedy was a repeat visitor south of the border as well, notably fighting with police in a Mayday demonstration in 2004. It’s been five years since this was made public knowledge and Michael D Higgins TD – now president of Ireland – demanded an explanation.

SDS officer Jim Boyling was there in the mid 1990s so it’s clear the Republic, like the North, has a long history of being targeted by both of Britain’s main spycops units.

HOW MUCH MORE?

Last year we compiled a list of 17 countries visited by spycops over a period of 25 years. It is barely the beginning. All of these instances come from the fifteen exposed officers from the political secret police units. There are over a hundred more about whom we know nothing.

How much more of this – and what else that we haven’t even imagined – did they do? What campaigns did they infiltrate? Whereabouts were they? What crimes did they commit? Which children are still looking for disappeared fathers under false names?

Their actions – which the Met itself describes as “manipulative, abusive and wrong” – were perpetrated against uncounted numbers of people. The apologies and inquiry apply to actions in England and Wales, but it is no less abhorrent if the victim is abroad and/or foreign.

The German request is a major event. The extensive incursion of spycops into politically sensitive Irish territories surely means there will surely be more demands for inclusion and information coming from there as well. Affected activists have also initiated a legal case in Northern Ireland to force inclusion in the inquiry, a tactic that may well spread to other countries. Yet the disdain with which the Scottish government’s long-standing demand has been treated by the Home Office means the fight is far from over.

The arrogant disregard for the personal integrity and wellbeing of individuals was carried over to the laws and statutes of entire countries. Everyone who has been abused by spycops deserves the full truth, be they a solitary citizen or a sovereign nation.