Did the Attorney General authorise a false prosecution?

In November 1992, the then Attorney General Sir Nicholas Lyell was asked to authorise my prosecution under the Official Secrets Act. I remember this event particularly clearly, because my lawyers told me that he hadn’t signed this authorisation only days before the deadline, and that if he didn’t sign the necessary document then I would have to be released from custody.

My lawyers were puzzled why the authorisation had not been given earlier, and I was becoming hopeful that my prosecution was about to be dropped. Then, late on the day prior to the deadline, Sir Nicholas Lyell signed the document, and my prosecution was authorised to continue.

In hindsight it should now be asked: on what legal basis was my prosecution authorised by the Attorney General? Knowing now that the key exhibit was falsely presented in court by the CPS and their MoD witness Dr Meirion Francis Lewis, it must now be doubtful whether the Attorney General had been provided with the correct reasons to justify him authorising my prosecution.

This needs to be investigated further, and so as first step I sent an e-mail to the Attorney General’s office to complain about what had happened. This is what I wrote:


Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2008
From: Mike Smith
To: complaints [at] attorneygeneral.gsi.gov.uk
Subject: Complaint to the Attorney General

To: The Rt Hon the Baroness Scotland of Asthal QC

Dear Baroness Scotland,

Re: My Prosecution under the Official Secrets Act in 1993

I am writing to you to make an official complaint about my treatment at the hands of the British Justice System.

I understand that Sir Nicholas Lyell authorised my prosecution under the Official Secrets Act in November 1992, and that this authorisation was based on false information provided to your office by the CPS.

Subsequently this false information was repeated in the Central Criminal Court where I was tried, and on the judge’s instructions I was duly convicted of alleged crimes based on that false information.

I am now in a position to prove that the information, on which the Attorney General based his authorisation for my prosecution, was in fact false and that this information was known by my prosecutors to be false.

I respectfully ask you to investigate this matter and advise me of whatever steps I may take to remedy the injustice that I have suffered.

Yours sincerely,
Michael John Smith


I received an acknowledgement of my e-mail from Mr Shariq Ali:


Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2008
From: Shariq Ali Shariq.Ali [at] attorneygeneral.gsi.gov.uk
To: Mike Smith, complaints [at] attorneygeneral.gsi.gov.uk
Subject: RE: Complaint to the Attorney General

Dear Sir,

Thank you for writing to the Attorney General's Office.

We hope to be in a position to respond to your request in the near future.

Yours faithfully

Shariq Ali
Correspondence Unit
Attorney General's Office


Followed 3 weeks later by this disappointing reply:


Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008
From: Shariq Ali Shariq.Ali [at] attorneygeneral.gsi.gov.uk
To: Mike Smith
Subject: RE: Complaint to the Attorney General

Dear Sir,

Thank you for your e-mail of 20 March 2008.

I regret that Baroness Scotland cannot provide you with legal advice regarding your case. It is open to you to take legal advice or to approach the Criminal Cases Review Commission if you wish to raise questions regarding your conviction. If you consider that a criminal offence has or may have been committed, you should refer the matter to the police.

Yours faithfully

Correspondence Unit
Attorney General's Office

This reply was completely unsatisfactory, and so I had to reply in a stronger fashion than before:

Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2008
From: Mike Smith
To: Shariq Ali Shariq.Ali [at] attorneygeneral.gsi.gov.uk, complaints [at] attorneygeneral.gsi.gov.uk
Subject: RE: Complaint to the Attorney General

Dear Mr Ali,

Thank you for your e-mail.

You appear not to have read my original message, which was a complaint against the Attorney General for having authorised my prosecution based on false information. If I have not made my position completely clear, I AM MAKING A COMPLAINT AGAINST THE ATTORNEY GENERAL.

I am not asking Baroness Scotland for any legal advice, but I do expect her to investigate why I was prosecuted using false information. I am surprised that you have not even asked me what information I am talking about - perhaps the Attorney General is already aware that the CPS perverted the course of justice in my case (Case no T921648)?

For your information the CCRC has been "investigating" my case since 1998 (Case No 00946/98), but have so far failed to identify the evidence I discovered quite easily, evidence that proves a miscarriage of justice.

I have today logged an official complaint to the Metropolitan Police, that the Police, the MoD and the CPS were all involved in perverting the course of justice - there is no other explanation. Whether the Attorney General was also a party to this criminal act, no doubt will become apparent over the course of time.

Yours sincerely,
Michael John Smith

Mr Shariq Ali’s reply was even more surprising, particularly because, up to this point, nobody at the Attorney General’s office had bothered to enquire what I had written to complain to them about. Were they mind readers, or simply not interested in what I was writing about?

Date: Thu, 17 Apr 2008
From: Shariq Ali Shariq.Ali [at] attorneygeneral.gsi.gov.uk
To: Mike Smith
Subject: RE: Complaint to the Attorney General

Dear Sir,

Thank you for your response.

I note the points you include in your e-mail and should state for your assistance that the AG does not authorise CPS prosecutions. In the event you wish to complain about the CPS conduct of your case you will have to instigate a CPS complaints procedure. In the event you remain dissatisfied your complaint will then be picked up by the Attorney General's Office. I believe that all complaints to about the CPS must be addressed to the CPS and be made in writing for the formal procedure to begin.

I trust this is of assistance to you.

Yours faithfully

Shariq Ali
Correspondence Unit
Attorney General's Office

I investigated what the Official Secrets Act 1911 said on this point, because I was becoming confused about what I was being told. However, the OSA is quite clear on the relevant point, as can be seen on the official website. I had to respond again to the misleading information I was being given by Mr Ali:

Date: Thu, 17 Apr 2008
From: Mike Smith
To: Shariq Ali Shariq.Ali [at] attorneygeneral.gsi.gov.uk, complaints [at] attorneygeneral.gsi.gov.uk
Subject: RE: Complaint to the Attorney General

Dear Mr Ali,

Thank you for your reply,

I am aware of the CPS complaints procedure, and have been in contact with them about this matter. I am in the process of preparing a formal complaint against the CPS.

However, unless I am very much mistaken, I believe that you are wrong in stating that my prosecution was not authorised by the Attorney General. In 1992 I was charged with 4 counts under section 1 of the Official Secrets Act 1911, and that Act appears to confirm that the AG was responsible for authorising my prosecution:

Para (8) 'A prosecution for an offence under this Act shall not be instituted except by or with the consent of the Attorney-General'

I remember, at the time, my solicitor told me that they were awaiting the authorisation of the AG before my case could proceed. So are you telling me that the AG was not responsible?

If, as I believe, the AG did authorise my prosecution, then I return to my complaint: that he did so based on false information provided to him, albeit that the CPS may have prepared the material on which the AG acted.

Yours sincerely,
Michael John Smith

No doubt this matter will continue for some time, and I will keep my readers updated on this saga. All I want to discover is whether the CPS had misled the Attorney General, and wrongly convinced him to authorise my prosecution based on false information. There is a fault somewhere in the chain of events that led to my conviction, and I am determined to discover who has acted illegally in this matter.

Police, MoD and CPS perverted the course of justice

I am now certain that the evidence at my trial was deliberately manipulated to ensure that I would be found guilty. A serious crime of perverting the course of justice has taken place, and the individuals directly responsible are those who investigated and prepared my prosecution. It is clear that the Police, MoD and CPS have all played a role in suppressing evidence and witnesses that would have spoiled the Prosecution’s case in Court.

I shall be pursuing this matter in every way possible to expose who is responsible for the illegal act of tampering with the evidence. If they are public officials then malfeasance in public office is also a serious crime.

Today I submitted a formal complaint to the Police:

On 8 August 1992 I was arrested and then charged with offences under the Official Secrets Act. At my trial in Sept/Nov 1993 (case ref T921648) I was found guilty and subsequently imprisoned for over 10 years.

A key exhibit that secured my conviction was a document (Exhibit pages 51-59), which was dated 1982 and marked “restricted”. The evidence about this document by a MoD scientist, named Dr Meirion Francis Lewis, was only disclosed during the trial in an “ambush” tactic by the Prosecution. The significant aspects of Dr Lewis’s evidence was that the document was used on the ALARM missile, as used in the Gulf War of 1991, and that the information in the document was highly sensitive and could be used by an enemy to jam the missile. Although there were 16 recipients of the document listed on its distribution list, not one of them was asked to give a Police Witness Statement or evidence at the trial.

In October 2007 I obtained information that the “restricted” document became obsolete in 1984, and that it was replaced by another specification which was marked “unclassified”. Therefore, the document could not have been used on any ALARM missiles in service during the Gulf War, and the MoD itself must have agreed that the information in the document should be declassified. If this evidence had been available to my Defence team it would have completely changed the cross-examination of Dr Lewis, who was the most important Prosecution witness on the technical evidence at my trial.

Since 1998 the CCRC has been investigating my complaints (case no 00946/98) that my trial was unfair, but the CCRC has failed to discover any new evidence about the anomalies I have drawn their attention to. Members of Parliament have also failed to obtain any explanation from the MoD about this matter; with the reason being given that the CCRC is still investigating the case.

From the way that evidence was disclosed during the trial; the failure to take witness statements from anyone on the distribution list of the “restricted” document; and the testimony of Dr Lewis (who was not an expert on ALARM, or knowledgeable about the “restricted” document) - it is now clear that an organised plan was in place to prevent the truth from being revealed at my trial.

I am therefore making a formal complaint against the Police for perverting the course of justice. I cannot see that the Police acted alone in this matter, because both the CPS and the MoD must have been involved in the decision to withhold evidence from the jury at my trial.

The documents relevant to this matter (from my trial and Appeal) are available via links on my Wikipedia entry.

Oleg Gordievsky claims an assassination plot

I see that it was announced tonight on Sky News, and published on the Daily Mail website, that Oleg Gordievsky has claimed he was a victim of an assassination attempt back in November 2007, when he fell ill and was taken to hospital. Surrey Police are investigating these claims, but I doubt that they will amount to much. The story looks more like Gordievsky is suffering from paranoia, probably brought on by his previous lifestyle and treachery against the country of his birth.

Oleg Gordievsky nearly falls off his perch

It is quite funny that he appears to have fallen out with his mates in MI6, because he was always singing their praises in the past, even to the extent of writing letters to newspapers about what a great organisation it was. Perhaps MI6 is no longer happy with Oleg Gordievsky’s constant attempts to seek publicity for himself, although he could have been seen as a liability due to his tendency to exaggerate and lie.

Back in the 1990s he made various allegations against well-known politicians and public figures, such as Michael Foot and George Robertson, accusing them of being KGB agents. Very few of Gordievsky’s allegations amounted to anything, although he must have known that such serious and false claims would cause distress and damage to his victims, but apparently he had no conscience about publicising such lies.

Gordievsky gave evidence at my own trial in 1993, where he made up a story that he believed I had been sent on a KGB training mission to Oporto in Portugal back in 1977, when I was on a camping and driving holiday with a friend of mine. The evidence for his claim was a tourist map that I had saved from this holiday. However, Gordievsky’s analysis of the facts was very biased and designed to help the Prosecution, which eventually led to me being convicted and sentenced to 20 years imprisonment. What infuriated me was that this really had been just a holiday, but Gordievsky’s exaggerations must have swayed the jury against me.

This story about Oporto was described in the Portuguese magazine Focus in 2007, and it is apparent that Gordievsky’s claims were not based on any real evidence. In fact, when the Mitrokhin Archive was published in 1999, the so-called story about a Portuguese KGB training mission was claimed to be in Lisbon in 1979, a completely different place and year. So, Gordievsky’s version of events could only have been guesswork designed to support my prosecution.

As more evidence has come to light, which supports my belief that my conviction had been deliberately engineered in 1993, it has become pretty obvious that some underhanded and criminal activity lay behind certain aspects of my trial. I have reported to the Police that more than one individual was involved in perverting the course of justice during my prosecution. It will be interesting to see how seriously these matters are taken by the authorities, although they often try to brush such embarrassing matters under the carpet.

Nevertheless, what a nasty piece of work Gordievsky has turned out to be - he is nothing but a fantasist and an attention seeker. Far from deserving high honours from the Queen, he really deserves to be condemned for expressing exaggerated opinions and telling lies. Probably this new story about an attempted assassination is yet another of his efforts to attract attention to himself, and to make some money from the media interest.

Straighten that tie, you scruffy little man

For anyone interested you can read Gordievsky’s cross-examination from my trial and the MI5 briefings used to “assist” him here on the JAR2 website and here and here on the Cryptome website. I think it is very unlikely that anybody has made an attempt on Gordievsky’s life, but if he had any conscience about what he has done in his life he should be more worried that he might become suicidal, and in that endeavour he would have a greater chance of success.