20 December 2007

Extracting the truth from the myth

The Echo has again published an article about my case, this time highlighting the new evidence that has emerged to challenge the Prosecution case at my trial. Unfortunately, this article mixes up a few of the facts with some of the myths that were put out by the MoD and MI5 at the time of my arrest, when it seemed that those organisations were desperate to see military secrets where there were none.

However, the article does indicate the encouraging point that Members of Parliament, Mr Andrew Mackinlay and Mr James Duddridge, are looking into my case again. It is to be hoped that they will try to raise the key issues with those who can get to the bottom of what went wrong at my trial.

I have added the following comment to the page where the article appears on the Echo website:

It is a pity that this article repeats the same untrue account that has done the rounds for years. I never sold military secrets to the Russians, and certainly not to Viktor Oshchenko, who left the UK in 1979, 11 years before the period covered by my trial.

In fact, at my trial it could not be proved that I met any “Russian” contact, and MI5 had to admit that they had no evidence I had met anyone in the KGB. The claim about “secrets” is also simply ludicrous, because I had the lowest security clearance, and I was prohibited from even seeing a “secret” document, let alone having one in my possession.

The so-called secrets amounted to one document marked “restricted” and dated 1982 - a document that became obsolete in 1984 and replaced by a different specification that was marked “unclassified” - this point alone indicates that the MoD judged the information was NOT secret before my trial.

That an obsolete, low-level document was claimed to be a “top secret” just proves how the truth can be twisted by those that have no regard for British Justice. Unfortunately, lies take the place of evidence in cases such as mine.