The former MI5 officer Mr David Shayler claimed a first-round victory against the British government yesterday after he was charged with breaking the Official Secrets Act, but was not charged in connection with the more serious allegation that MI6 was involved in a plot to assassinate the Libyan leader, Col Muammar Gadafy. He will make his first British court appearance at Bow Street Magistrates' Court in London on Thursday.
After ending a self-imposed three-year "political exile" in France, the former agent turned "whistleblower" returned, determined to challenge what he called the "cover-up and complacency" within official circles following his disclosures about wrongdoing and incompetence at the heart of the intelligence services.
Mr Shayler launched the robust defence of his decision to breach the Official Secrets Act immediately after he was released on police bail from Charing Cross police station in central London. He had spent almost three hours talking to officers from the Metropolitan Police after being arrested in Dover upon his arrival from France yesterday morning. But Mr Shayler said he was "not questioned at all" about his allegations that MI5 held secret files on senior Labour politicians or that MI6 was involved in a plot to kill Col Gadafy.
Two charges against Mr Shayler of breaking the Official Secrets Act relate to his disclosures about incompetence and secret files held by MI5 that were first published in the Mail on Sunday in 1997. Mr Shayler had recently left the domestic intelligence service and he told the newspaper that files held on "subversives" included two Labour MPs, Mr Jack Straw, now Home Secretary, and Mr Peter Mandelson, now the Northern Ireland Secretary. He also claimed that bureaucracy prevented MI5 from foiling the 1993 IRA bomb in London's Bishops gate, but that allegation is not being investigated by the police.
Mr Shayler is claiming that the European Convention on Human Rights, which will be incorporated into law in England and Wales in October, will enable him to mount a public interest defence against the charges under the Official Secrets Act. If his case goes to trial he will be allowed to give evidence relating to his 1997 allegations, but he will not be allowed to speak about the Gadafy plot.
Insisting he had revealed intelligence secrets in order to expose wrongdoing, Mr Shayler said yesterday it was a matter of public interest that the Gadafy assassination plot should be investigated and he said it was wrong that MI6 officers were allowed "literally to get away with murder". He said MI6 did not deserve an amnesty "for conspiring to murder people".
Confirming that the "Gadafy plot" was not contained in the charges, Mr Shayler said: "It was farcical that I was being made a criminal for reporting a crime. It is only because this government system is so myopic. Today does represent a climbdown and quite clearly a backdown from what was a very draconian and repressive position."
Earlier, Mr Shayler had repeated his allegation that MI6 was involved in a plot to assassinate Col Gadafy in 1996, but the Foreign Office said its position on the claims had not changed. "We have already made our position clear on these allegations and we have nothing to add or subtract to what we said at the time," the Foreign Office said.
The former MI5 officer claimed that two officers from the foreign intelligence service paid members of an extremist Islamic organisation that was planning to kill Col Gadafy, but the bomb plot went wrong and he escaped unhurt while several people nearby were killed.