MI5 agents have been granted legal immunity to participate in murder, torture, sexual assaults and other criminality, a tribunal has heard.
The secret policy may, for decades, have enabled the security service to conceal illegal activity, Ben Jaffey QC told the investigatory powers tribunal.
Even oversight of the practice, introduced in 2012, was kept secret, and the judge appointed to oversee it instructed not to comment on the policy’s legality, he alleged.
The claims have emerged in a case brought by an alliance of human rights group including Privacy International, Reprieve, the Committee on the Administration of Justice and the Pat Finucane Centre in Northern Ireland.
The allegations suggest that MI5 sought to give its agents and informants even greater freedom to commit criminal offences than the protections available to police informers.
There goes the British Empire and us little old Commonwealthers are abandoned!
ReplyDelete