Police
unit monitors 9,000 'extremists'
Officers
familiar with workings of unit indicate that many of campaigners
listed on database have no criminal record
25
June, 2013
A
national police unit that uses undercover officers to spy on
political groups is currently monitoring almost 9,000 people it has
deemed "domestic extremists".
The
National Domestic Extremism Unit is using surveillance techniques to
monitor campaigners who are listed on the secret database, details of
which have been disclosed to the Guardian after a freedom of
information request.
A
total of 8,931 individuals "have their own record" on a
database kept by the unit, for which the Metropolitan police is the
lead force. It currently uses surveillance techniques, including
undercover police, paid informants, and intercepts against political
campaigners from across the spectrum.
Senior
officers familiar with the workings of the unit have indicated to the
Guardian that many of the campaigners listed on the database have no
criminal record.
The
extremism unit monitors the full range of activists: from far-right
activists in the English Defence League through to animal rights
protesters, anti-capitalists and anti-war demonstrators.
As
as the Metropolitan police was battling to contain the fallout over
the activities of a former undercover police officer who was asked to
dig for "dirt" that would undermine the Stephen Lawrence
campaign, evidence emerged that the main witness to his murder was
also targeted.
Sources
indicated that the Met secretly bugged meetings with Duwayne Brooks
and his solicitor. The surveillance operation was understood to have
been authorised by a "senior officer" in around 1999 or
2000.
At
least two meetings are believed to have been covertly recorded, one
of them at the offices of Brooks's solicitor, Jane Deighton. She told
the BBC, which first reported the story, that if true the operation
was "scandalous".
The
Met commissioner, Bernard Hogan-Howe, is resisting calls for an
independent inquiry. His force said it recognised the "huge
seriousness" of the latest claims about surveillance of Brooks,
who is now a Lib Dem councillor in South London, and would
investigate them internally.
Former
undercover officer Peter Francis had previously revealed he was
involved in an ultimately failed operation to discredit Brooks,
seeking information that was used to bring an unsuccessful
prosecution for criminal damage in 1993, a few months after Lawrence
died. Francis's full story is contained in a book about several
undercover operations, published this week.
Francis's
unit, the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS), was disbanded in 2008,
but later replaced with the National Domestic Extremism Unit. In
recent years the unit is known to have focused its resources on
spying on environmental campaigners, particularly those engaged in
direct action and civil disobedience to protest against climate
change.
A
small number of activists have obtained excerpts from their file from
the extremism unit's database. They include an 88-year-old
campaigner, John Catt, who won a landmark lawsuit against the Met
three months ago. Three court-of-appeal judges ruled the Met had
unlawfully retained details of the pensioner's presence at more than
55 protests. Details were logged about slogans on his banner and
whether he was clean-shaven.
Another
activist, Guy Taylor, 46, who campaigns against capitalism,
discovered that he was spied on while attending Glastonbury festival
– which is known to have been frequented by a number of police
spies in recent decades. Taylor has one conviction for spray-painting
a slogan in 1991.
He
and Catt are among the thousands of activists who have been
categorised as domestic extremists on the extremism unit's files. The
Met previously used the term "subversives" to describe
citizens with radical political views whom it was spying on. On
Tuesday,
Francis
said in a Guardian webchat that those targeted by Special Branch in
the past included the former home secretary, Jack Straw, once a
student union activist.
"I
read Mr Straw's rather large file," he said. "It will be a
pink file with his individual 'RF' (Registry File) number. The same
for [MPs] Diane Abbott and Jeremy Corbyn – and Imran Khan, the
lawyer for the Stephen Lawrence family. The human rights solicitor
firm Bindmans also had its own dedicated file."
Francis
also said a low point of his deployment as an anti-racist campaigner
in the 1990s came when he undermined the campaign of a family who
wanted justice over the death of a boxing instructor who was struck
on the head by a police baton.
He
said he had infiltrated the family-led campaign for justice over the
death of Brian Douglas, a 33-year-old who died after he was hit on
the head with a police baton in 1995 when he was stopped for driving
erratically.
"The
lowest point I reached morally was when I was standing outside
Kennington police station for the Brian Douglas justice campaign in
May 1995. It was a candlelit vigil and his relatives were all there,"
he said. "By me passing on all the campaign information –
everything that the family was planning and organising through Youth
Against Racism in Europe – I felt I was virtually reducing their
chances of ever receiving any form of justice to zero. To this day, I
personally feel that family has never had the justice they deserved."
Francis
said he had "no faith" in the two existing inquires that
the home secretary, Theresa May, has said will look into his
allegations. One is an inquiry by a barrister into previously-known
allegations of corruption in the investigation in the Lawrence
murder, while the second, Operation Herne, is an internal Met police
review being led by the chief constable of Derbyshire police.
"Only
a judicial-led or public inquiry – not just into the Stephen
Lawrence allegations, but into the wider controversy – has any
chance of ever establishing the truth," he said.
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