Daily Mail : WHY SHOULD GARETH'S FAMILY HAVE TO HEAR SUCH CRUEL UNTRUTHS?

WHY SHOULD GARETH'S FAMILY HAVE TO HEAR SUCH CRUEL UNTRUTHS? [scroll down]

By SIMON TRUMP | August 29, 2010

The mother of a British spy murdered 20 years ago has criticised the ‘heartless and despicable disinformation’ leaked by MI6 to cover up the truth about his undercover work.

Diana Moyle’s son Jonathan, a former RAF pilot and defence journalist, was assassinated in a hotel bedroom in Chile in 1990. His death was made to look like a sex game which went wrong.

Mrs Moyle spoke out yesterday as the family of Gareth Williams denounced similar false rumours about him using male escorts and keeping gay pornographic material.

She said: ‘My heart goes out to the family of Gareth Williams. Why should they have to hear such cruel untruths being spread about his death? Perhaps some would claim it was in the national interest.

‘But we went through exactly the same thing when Jonathan was killed two decades ago. The pain which those lies caused me then and now is unbearable.

‘My son was a bright, articulate and decent fellow who was proud to serve his country and his reputation was sullied by a series of comments made by a Government official at a reception.

‘He wrote to us apologising for his claims which he said were “overheard” and then printed by journalists but I know that such things are not accidentally leaked. It is done deliberately.’

Jonathan Moyle’s body was found hanging inside a wardrobe with a padded noose around his neck in a hotel in the Chilean capital Santiago. He had been investigating a company owned by arms dealer Carlos Cardoen which was modifiying helicopters, possibly to carry nuclear weapons, to sell to Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

A Foreign Office official, believed to be an MI6 source, alleged at an official reception that Moyle had died accidentally while engaged in an auto-erotic act.

But Mrs Moyle’s late husband Anthony, a retired teacher, who died three years ago aged 78, refused to accept his son had killed himself in this manner.

Prior to his own death, Mr Moyle discovered his son was probably drugged, suffocated, injected with a lethal substance – a syringe was found at the scene – and then strung up in the closet. The same view was shared by Richard van Oppen, the coroner for East Devon, where the Moyles lived at the time, who returned a verdict of unlawful killing at his inquest held in 1998.

It was only revealed after Anthony Moyle’s death that Jonathan had been recruited by MI6 while a student at Aberystwyth University.

Mrs Moyle said: ‘I spoke to Jonathan ten minutes before he probably died. He was in good spirits even though he had just got back to discover his room had been ransacked and there were papers scattered everywhere.’

Author Wensley Clarkson, who wrote a best-selling book about the Moyle case, said his death seemed to have been a ‘message’ from his enemies and ‘it certainly looks that way with the Williams case as well’.

He added: ‘The Williams family – just like the Moyles – deserve to be given a proper explanation of why and how Gareth died.’