- Tony Blair faced fresh questions about the legality of
the war on Iraq last night after prosecutors dropped charges against a
whistleblower who had threatened to expose secrets in court.
-
- Katharine Gun, a former employee at GCHQ, the top-secret
electronic eavesdropping centre, was charged with leaking secrets about
preparations for the conflict but walked free from the Old Bailey when
the case against her collapsed.
-
- The Crown Prosecution Service triggered accusations of
a cover-up when it refused to go into the reasons why, after nearly a year,
it had decided to offer no evidence against Ms Gun.
-
- Ms Gun said she was proud of her decision to leak the
fact that the US had requested British help in "dirty tricks"
against wavering members of the United Nations Security Council before
the war.
-
- Her lawyers suggested that the case had been dropped
amid fears that Lord Goldsmith, the Attorney General, would have been forced
to reveal details in court of his controversial legal opinion backing the
conflict.
-
- As well as the Attorney General, Jack Straw, the Foreign
Secretary, and possibly Mr Blair himself might also have been forced to
give evidence if the case had gone ahead.
-
- Clare Short, a former cabinet minister, and opposition
parties immediately called on the Prime Minister to publish Lord Goldsmith's
advice in full to avoid allegations of a cover-up.
-
- Talking about the collapse of the court case, Ms Short
said that "there is something there that stinks".
-
- She stressed that yesterday's events would fuel speculation
that the Government's dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction had
been "hyped" specifically to help Lord Goldsmith prove that Saddam
Hussein posed a threat under international law.
-
- "This is enormously important. If they fiddled around
to get legal authority and that involved exaggerating the intelligence
then it wasn't just massaging public opinion, it was massaging legality,"
she said. "I believe there were shenanigans, to-ing and fro-ing and
Blair would have been involved in that. There is something very fishy about
it all. I think that stopping this case, while I'm glad for her [Ms Gun],
that is probably what is behind this."
-
- Ms Gun, 29, had been charged with breaching the Official
Secrets Act after leaking a top-secret e-mail revealing US plans to bug
delegates at the UN Security Council before a crucial vote on the conflict.
-
- The formal decision not to continue the prosecution of
the former GCHQ officer came within five hours of her legal team seeking
disclosure of the legal advice given by the Attorney General, over the
Iraq war. James Welch, the solicitor for the civil rights watchdog, Liberty,
acting for Ms Gun, said: "Our case was that any advice the Government
received on the legality of war was relevant to the case and we were prepared
to go before a judge and argue for it to be disclosed.
-
- "What Katharine would have said, had this case gone
to trial, was that she honestly believed that the Government would not
have gone to war if they thought going to war without a second resolution
was unlawful. So, if that is the case, we wanted to know what the assessment
was in government as to whether it would have been lawful or not."
-
- The CPS refused to go into detail about why it had dropped
the case but government sources said Lord Goldsmith had not been directly
involved in the decision and it related purely to "evidential"
matters. It was claimed by sources that a jury would simply have thrown
the case out if it had gone to trial.
-
- Downing Street refused to comment on the case. Mr Blair's
official spokesman said: "This is a matter for the CPS."
-
- Ben Emmerson QC, Ms Gun's counsel and one of the foremost
human rights law specialists in the country, saidthere were precedents
for governments having to disclose attorney generals' legal advice in court
on Matrix Churchill, and a case involving Spanish fishing rights in British
waters in the 1980s.
-
- "Katharine Gunn is entitled to know and perhaps,
more importantly, the public is entitled to know why, almost a year after
her arrest, and three months after she was charged, the CPS has decided
to drop the case," Mr Emmerson added.
-
- Mark Ellison, for the Crown, said: "You will understand
that consideration had been given to what is appropriate for the Crown
to say. It is not appropriate to give further reasons.
-
- "I am reluctant to go further than that unless the
court requires I do."
-
- Sir Menzies Campbell, the Liberal Democrat spokesman
on foreign affairs, said: "The dropping of these charges will avoid
severe government embarrassment. There is little doubt that Ms Gun, and
her legal advisers, would have been bound to put the legality of military
action in Iraq at the very centre of their defence. It is even possible
that the full text of the Attorney General's advice to the Cabinet might
have been published at last. This is a government retreat."
-
- © 2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd
-
- http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/legal/story.jsp?story=495177
|
