29 July 2007

Official Secrets Act Section 1 cases

I noticed that Spyblog has commented on my previous post about Daniel James NOT being the first Official Secrets Act case since the Cold War.

Spyblog has also made the point that there was another case under Section 1, in which Katharine Gun had been charged with leaking information that the USA planned to bug the offices of certain countries at the United Nations. This was an attempt to gain acceptance for the US's illegal policy to invade Iraq.

It was not entirely clear why the Gun case was dropped, but it is likely it was the concern of the British government, and their intelligence services, that the Prosecution would be required to reveal more sensitive information and documents during the trial.

Hopefully something similar will apply in the Daniel James case, because the Prosecution will be required to explain how they came by the evidence to charge Daniel, and whether that evidence was obtained by legal methods.