Telegraph : Spy murder case could be too sensitive for court

Spy murder case could be too sensitive for court

By John Bingham | August 31, 2010

The true explanation for the murder of Gareth Williams, the MI6 codebreaker found dead in a bath, may have to be kept secret even if his killer is found and put on trial, lawyers have warned.

The intense secrecy surrounding the investigation has prompted speculation that any future court case could be the first murder trial in British legal history to be held entirely behind closed doors.

Mr Williams, 31, an employee of GCHQ, the government’s “listening post” in Cheltenham, Glos, who was working on secondment to MI6 in London, was found dead at a flat in London last week.

No one has been arrested and police have been investigating Mr Williams’s background as well as his movements in the days before his death.

But it is thought that the unique level of sensitivity around the case – with the dead man, his workmates, his movements and even the flat where he was found all linked to the security services – could make any future court case virtually impossible to try in public.

Lawyers said that powers already available under the criminal procedure rules 2005 could be used by a judge to hold all or part of any future trial in secret for reasons of national security.

Under a separate procedure the prosecution could even apply for a “Public Interest Immunity certificate” banning sensitive evidence being disclosed even to the defence.

Similar powers were recently used by David Miliband, the former Foreign Secretary, in an attempt to prevent three senior judges disclosing details about the treatment of Binyam Mohamed, the former Guantánamo Bay detainee.

In 2008 the case of Wang Yam, a financial adviser accused of murdering Allan Chappelow, an 86-year-old writer, made legal history when it was heard partly in secret.

The public and press were excluded while the defence case was heard, despite objections from Yam’s legal team, on “national security” grounds after a PII certificate was granted, following an application from Jacqui Smith, then the Home Secretary.

With details of the investigation into Mr Williams’s death already clouded in secrecy, lawyers said that a similar approach could be taken in any future court case, with the entire trial potentially held in private.

“The runes are that they are desperate, almost at any cost, to keep this under wraps," said Mark Stephens, a partner at Finers Stephens Innocent, who led a legal challenge in the Binyam Mohamed case.

“It may be that there is a genuine national security interest but that will be very limited.

“What on has to be guarding against is that somebody is claiming national security in the interests of covering up a degree of embarrassment or incompetence or some other interest which isn’t national security.” Dan Hyde, a consultant at Cubism Law, said: “On the face of it there certainly seem to be parallels that can be drawn from the case of Allan Chappelow.

“That was a case where there were public interest immunity issues and as a result it was one of those very rare cases in which the defence was presented in camera, that is in private.

“It seems this is a case that is surrounded by intrigue, you have someone who was working for MI6, his body was found in a bag and the police did not categorise it as a murder inquiry.”