Copyright © Erkin Guney 2008-
Untouchables: Secret Justice
This is an extract from Chapter
22 of Untouchables.
It refers to
Erkin Guney's wrongful
imprisonment in 1996.
The extract is reproduced with permission of the authors, Michael Gillard and Laurie Flynn
Chapter 22 -
When summarised, the way Egg Guney was treated is shocking. Since his arrest in September
1995 anti-
First the Ghost Squad and then the CIB intelligence cell avoided PCA [Police Complaints Authority] supervision and treated him as an intelligence source while they managed and manipulated the public linage of the Yard’s corruption problem.
Egg had given himself an insurance policy because he simply didn’t trust the integrity
of the anti-
The following year he also changed solicitors to Birnberg & Pierce, the miscarriage of justice specialists. Solicitor Tim Greene took over his case and supplied the CCRC with the limited information his client had from the police.
A lot had happened by mid-
The whole thing was absurd. This was now the third investigation since 1995, and again it wasn’t being referred to the PCA. Furthermore, in March 2002, Jarratt was removed from his command pending an internal investigation into allegations of bullying, expenses fraud and assault brought by fellow officers. These remarkable events drove Tim Greene to write again to the CCRC asking what exactly was going on and what, if anything, they could disclose from their investigation, now in its fourth year.
On 18 July the CCRC wrote back, 11 days after Martin Morgan was jailed for his part in the kidnap plot. Egg’s case, said the CCRC, would be referred back to the Court of Appeal with a recommendation that the conviction was unsafe. By now he had served half his sentence and was almost eligible for parole. Although the CCRC had sent full reasons to the Appeal Court and CPS in a confidential annexe, Egg was told he could know almost nothing of how the decision was reached because these considerations were “sensitive”. The Yard and CPS had invoked a law to keep secret all that it and NCIS [National Criminal Intelligence Service] had shown the CCRC.
The key phrase in the explanatory letter sent to Egg’s lawyer was this: “The Commission had become aware of information which was available to neither the defence nor the prosecution at the time of Mr Guney’s trial and appeal. That information amounts to evidence which substantially discredits the informant’s handler … the information concerned might have caused the trial judge to come to a significantly different conclusion at [the PII] hearing.” (1)
Incredibly the CPS was still opposing the recommendation to quash the conviction.
Tim Greene’s fear of a cover-
This tricky assignment from the CPS was given to detective inspector Adrian Harper.
The Untouchable was one of Jarratt’s boys who’d been brought onto the anti-
After four months the CPS made a remarkable volte-
On 15 May, Harper and detective constable Bill Maclean, both from the Intelligence
Development Group, a re-
Lord Justice Kennedy had previously indicated that “a fair amount” of what the Untouchables wanted kept secret was already in the public domain. This proved a false hope. Ten days later Egg returned, hoping to hear why his conviction was being quashed. It was a bleak day for open justice and democratic accountability of the police and the CPS.
The judgement indicated in the most guarded terms that “substantial doubt” had now been cast on the integrity of the police officers (in the plural) no longer serving, who compiled the intelligence report the day before Egg’s arrest. Had the material been available at the time of the trial back in May 1996 it would inevitably have been abandoned, it said. The judgement wasn’t read out. There was no apology. Egg emerged from Court 6 angry, confused and depressed. It was clear that had he not gone to the CCRC when he did, he would still be a convicted prisoner.
Why had CIB not disclosed the information that the CCRC and Court of Appeal found so persuasive? And why wasn’t the highly sensitive information Harper found, which led the CPS to change its mind, disclosed earlier? Outside in the corridor Harper wouldn’t be drawn on much, other than to confirm that the voices on the Ramadan Guney tapes were serving police officers.(2) It was logical then that the Untouchables knew their names.
Media inquiries were steered away from the Flying Squad, Martin Morgan and Jimmy Karagozlu. Both the Yard and the CPS were happy to leave the impression the whole matter was to do with “unsubstantiated” allegations about Keith Green and not other corruption allegations they had sat on for over seven years.
This whole scandal is about disclosure, or to be precise, non disclosure, from the Untouchables to the CPS; from the CPS to Egg’s lawyers; and from the Courts to the public, who picked up the whole bill. The CPS is supposed to safeguard the interests of justice from those of the police. But in Egg’s case it completely failed. The failure is remarkable because throughout his seven years in prison, disclosure had become the key issue for the criminal justice system.
Scotland Yard is a leading opponent of disclosure and nowhere has this been more
dominant than in its dealings with the CPS during the anti-
Ironically, Egg’s appeal in 1996 led the CPS to set up something called “The Guney
Group”. Senior CPS lawyers and anti-
It was only when supergrass Terry McGuinness made allegations in May 1998 about the
so called “first aid kits” that a role for the CPS in anti-
Anti-
Polaine explains: “Visa Card would [then] feed the information ... around [suspect] officers to Gold Card in so far as they needed to know things for disclosure purposes. We would agree with them the ambit of disclosure they could give to defence solicitors. [It was a] balancing exercise of ensuring that every potential appellant had all the information they needed for appeal purposes. But equally if there were matters that remained sensitive they weren’t made public.”
However, according to a senior CPS source, there were concerns from prosecutors about
the way CIB3 [Complaints Investigation Bureau 3 -
But Polaine was keen to stress that ultimately he and his CPS colleagues were entirely
dependent on the Untouchables disclosing all that was relevant to any appeal. In
other words they had to trust the integrity of the anti-
From the Guney Group came the formalisation of a secret blacklist of officers. It
is a refinement of the so-
For some, the trust of the commissioner is recoverable. For others it is an unofficial
way of getting them to resign without embarrassing disciplinary hearings, court cases
or employ-
Those on the secret blacklist are placed on restricted duties and are not allowed near proactive operations, sensitive databases or informants and in some cases the witness box, because the police simply don’t regard them as witnesses of truth.
Every six months or so, the defective detective’s case is reviewed by a senior Met civilian who is head of Workforce Deployment.(3) He assesses all the sensitive material. Some officers are taken off. Others are kept on. The entire basis of what led an officer to lose the commissioner’s trust is rarely explained. Similarly, defence lawyers and members of the public are not allowed to know which of London’s finest are or have been subject to the blacklist.
DS Jim Gillan, we were told by his friends and colleagues, was put on the blacklist while he was serving on the Fraud Squad. In summer 2003, he retired from the police. His friends say he was in the was frustrated that his career in the force was stultified by the commissioner’s unexplained loss of trust in his integrity.
We asked him a series of questions about the Guney case. Was he one of the anonymous callers who’d offered to sabotage the prosecution for money? Was he the mysterious “Home Office official”? Had he and Morgan corruptly approached fellow detective Keith Green? Had he tried to help Morgan and Costello onto the Fraud Squad? What relationship did he have with Jimmy Karagozlu? And in what circumstances had he left the police? Jim Gillan did not confirm or deny the corruption allegations. He simply declined to comment. Martin Morgan told us from prison: “I’ve got nothing to say. But it didn’t happen”.
The Home Secretary David Blunkett has refused an inquiry into this case, ludicrously suggesting Egg Guney could always make a complaint against the Yard and the CPS. Shortly after receiving this response, the Yard launched a fourth internal investigation into itself led by detective inspector Shaun Keep, formerly of the intelligence cell. At least this time there was PCA supervision by Nicola Williams.
Although sceptical of the value of making yet another formal complaint, on 11 November
2003 Egg’s lawyers submitted a four-
It is telling that the Yard only sought supervision from the PCA when the “watchdog”
was withering on the vine and about to be replaced by the so-
Nicola Williams’ supervision of the internal inquiry into the Guney case will have to consider Roy Clark’s role. But Clark is now the IPCC’s director of investigation. All of which would appear to mean he will either be advising on an investigation into himself, or alternatively, Clark’s former colleagues in the Met will be investigating him and other colleagues.
Notes
(1) PII stands for Public Interest Immunity.
(2) Ramadan Guney (1932-
(3) Robert Dellegrotti.
This extract is reproduced with permission of the authors, Michael Gillard and Laurie Flynn
