Cui bono?

Wednesday, 6th February 2008

David Davis clearly scents that he can inflict political damage with the Sadiq Khan bugging affair. Today we read that the Justice Secretary Jack Straw may or may not have been wholly candid about what he was told about Khan’s prison visits to his constituent and childhood friend, Babar Ahmad. It is said that his adviser, who told him about the visit, ‘forgot’ to tell him that the visit was being bugged.

Who knows? Who cares?

Davis appears to be exercised by what he believes to be a breach of the Wilson Doctrine, the guidance drafted in 1966 which said MPs’ phone calls should not be bugged and which was updated a couple of years ago to include other surveillance of MPs. But as Straw made clear in the Commons, the bugging of the conversation between Khan and Ahmad did not breach the Wilson Doctrine. Straw informed the House:

In a written answer on 12 September 2007, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said: ‘The Wilson Doctrine applies to all forms of interception that are subject to authorisation by Secretary of State warrant’ [my emphasis].

And Straw also said:

Any authorisation for the interception of telephone calls and other public telecommunications requires a warrant personally signed by the relevant Secretary of State…Under the 2000 Act, the regime in respect of intrusive surveillance operations by the police and other domestic law enforcement agencies is different. Under these provisions, which originated with the Police Act 1997, passed in the closing months of the previous Administration, with our support, there is a hierarchy of approvals depending on the nature of the surveillance concerned. In the case of eavesdropping operations, authorisation by a chief officer of police or officer of equivalent rank in the Metropolitan Police Service is required. This regime is supervised by the chief surveillance commissioner — currently Sir Christopher Rose, formerly a senior judge of the Court of Appeal. Ministers play no part in these authorisations. Where any operation involves the use of premises of HM Prison Service, neither the Prison Service nor the Minister concerned is asked for any additional authorisation.

In other words, the bugging of the Ahmad/Khan conversation was not covered by a Secretary of State warrant— and therefore was also not covered by the Wilson doctrine. This fact was, for some reason, ignored by Davis in the debate in the House and in his continued agitation in today’s papers.

Moreover, one continues to ask the question — who was the source of the Sunday Times leak, and what was his/her agenda? Former Detective Sergeant Mark Kearney, the police officer who carried out the bugging and says he was pressurised into doing so by the Metropolitan Police even though he protested it was out of order, claimed to be ‘horrified’ at the leak to the Sunday Times — but is himself facing criminal prosecution for leaking information to the media.

Meanwhile, the question of whether Khan or Ahmed was the target of the bugging becomes a little muddier. The Sun reports today:

Security sources told yesterday how 9/11 plotter Zacarias Moussaoui asked lawyer Mr Khan to represent him after being accused of being the ‘20th hijacker’. The Labour whip was not allowed to see Moussaoui and was barred from seeing court papers in the run-up to the trial. But the MP for Tooting, South London, acted as a consultant to the self-confessed al-Qaeda agent — jailed for life in 2006.

Human rights lawyer Mr Khan, 37, who says he loathes terror groups, was the only practising Muslim on Moussaoui’s team. It brought him to the attention of MI5 and MI6. One security source said last night: ‘It is hardly surprising he came to the attention of security services in view of the people he was associated with.’ Mr Khan later defended extremists and Brits held in Guantanamo Bay. Last year it was revealed that five members of his family belonged to fundamental group Hizb ut-Tahrir.

It may well have been that, although Babar Ahmed was self-evidently the target of the prison bugging, which had clearly been directed at more of his visitors than just Sadiq Khan, the police were not uninterested in Khan himself and in the combination of the two of them. This merely underlines the point that — while there is no suggestion that Khan has done anything wrong — as two chief surveillance commissioners have said, it would clearly be madness for MPs who have contact with terrorists or who are suspected of being involved with terrorism or extremism to be exempted from surveillance.

Which is why it is so regrettable that David Davis has chosen to fan the flames of a story which, although he may not wish to do so, is surely intended to undermine counter-terrorism policing. Maybe Straw hasn’t told the truth about what precisely he was told when. But who benefits from all this? Not the public that needs to be protected from terror, that’s for sure.