A Bellingcat and Byline investigation can for the first time reveal Scotland Yard had intelligence Mazher Mahmood was corrupting police officers as far back as the summer of 2000.
The Yard’s 1999/2000 Operation Two Bridges had surveillance on Mahmood in The Victory pub, in Thornton Heath, south London by CIB3 officers (also known as the Ghost Squad), who were working from London’s Belgravia police station. An intelligence report dated 26th September 1999 damningly states:
While in the company of Rees, ‘Maz’ was with a plain clothes officer aged about 45 – officer was selling a story to Maz about inter-race marriage and the payment in dowry in the form of livestock
The ‘Rees’ mentioned in the intelligence report is private investigator Jonathan Rees from Southern Investigations. The Victory, a rundown pub in Gillet Street, Thornton Heath, is no longer there but was frequented by corrupt police officers, private detectives and journalists who often met there.
This is significant because it confirms there was a corruption cover-up by the Metropolitan Police (MPS), not only concerning Mahmood who is currently under police investigation for alleged perjury, but also reveals the true extent of Scotland Yard’s knowledge of the wider corruption between private investigators (Southern Investigation), News International, and MPS officers stretching back 16 years – and their failure to break up the criminal nexus.
As a direct result of this, it also confirms that both phone hacking and the interference of the Daniel Morgan murder investigations in 2002 by News of the World could have been prevented had the police acted on intelligence they possessed.
Far from acting, in December 2000, after Rees was found guilty and convicted on a totally separate charge (of conspiring to plant cocaine on an innocent mother to discredit her in a child custody battle and was sentenced to seven years imprisonment for attempting to prevent the course of justice), the MPS astonishingly DROPPED Operation Two Bridges, and when Rees walked out of prison, he was rehired by Andy Coulson for News of the World after serving his sentence and on a £150,000 salary – as if nothing had ever happened.
Such is the gravity of that single decision by the police not to pursue Operation Two Bridges, that it would later come back and personally haunt the sitting Prime Minister David Cameron when the phone hacking scandal erupted over a decade later in the summer of 2011: his judgment acutely questioned for taking Coulson into government as Director of Communications after Coulson had hired Rees. The News International scandal soon became a Conservative Party scandal too.
Initially, the MPS launched Operation Nigeria in 1999 to infiltrate the agency Southern Investigations and its premises to advance the investigation into the murder of private investigator Daniel Morgan, who was murdered in the car park of The Golden Lion pub in Sydenham South London – with a blow to the head with an axe in March 1987. The axe used to kill him struck with such force it was left embedded in Morgan’s face.
Rees and Morgan, who had been business partners of Southern Investigations in nearby Thornton Heath since 1984 had been drinking together at the Golden Lion pub on the night of Morgan’s murder. Morgan started the agency and once established he took on Rees. Morgan’s brother Alastair told The Daily Beast in 2013 that his brother had become suspicious of Rees and concerned about police corruption. He was preparing to expose corrupt local police officers to the News of the World according to colleague Brian Maddigan
After the murder, Detective Sergeant Sid Fillery from the local police station in Catford was assigned to the case. Already even by this point the investigation was severely compromised by Fillery who failed to disclose to his superiors he had been moonlighting for Southern Investigation. When Fillery took a statement from Rees, it did not include that both himself and Rees had been drinking with Morgan the previous night in the same pub or details of a robbery from the previous year in which Rees had claimed to have been robbed of £18,000 takings from a cash job at an auction house that Morgan did not want to take. Rees took on the job using off-duty police friends moonlighting.
Tony Thompson reported in the Observer in 2004:
Rees took the money to a local bank, but discovered the night safe had been glued shut. He decided to take it home, but claimed it was stolen on his doorstep by two men who sprayed noxious liquid in his face. No one was ever caught in connection with the robbery. Many believed the attack was a sham, including the car auction company, which demanded the return of its money. Rees agreed to repay the cash and wanted to take it from the Southern Investigations company account, but Morgan refused to allow him to do so, arguing that the loss had been down to Rees alone. Desperate to take control of the company, Rees allegedly tried on several occasions to have Morgan arrested for drink-driving, knowing that if he lost his licence he would have to give up working at the agency, but to no avail.
Observer’s report went on to quote a witness statement given to a inquest hearing of the murder in 1988 of an employee of Southern Investigations, Kevin Lennon:
According to Lennon’s statement, read at the inquest, Rees soon decided his only option was to have Morgan killed. ‘John Rees explained that, when or after Daniel Morgan had been killed, he would be replaced by a friend of his who was a serving policeman, Detective Sergeant Sid Fillery.’ Lennon also told the inquest that Rees said to him: ‘I’ve got the perfect solution for Daniel’s murder. My mates at Catford nick are going to arrange it.’ Lennon added: ‘He went on to explain to me that if they didn’t do it themselves the police would arrange for some person over whom they had some criminal charge pending to carry out Daniel’s murder.’
In the hours after Daniel’s death a murder inquiry was launched headed by Detective Superintendent Douglas Campbell. One of the detectives assigned to the squad was none other than Detective Sergeant Fillery.
Roger Williams MP told the House of Commons: ‘Not only was Sid Fillery among those officers, but he played a key role in the initial murder inquiry during the first four so-called golden days before he was required to withdraw from the murder squad for reasons of personal involvement with the primary suspect, Jonathan Rees. During those four days, Fillery was given the opportunity to manage the first interview under caution with Rees, and to take possession of key incriminating files from the premises of Southern Investigations Ltd, including Daniel’s diary, which has never since been found.’
Subsequently, there have been four further police inquiries investigating the murder in nearly three decades since – costing the taxpayer nearly £30m. However, nobody has ever been convicted and the suspects have always remained the same: Rees, Fillery, Vian brothers Gerry and Glenn and later the getaway driver, James Cook.
In May 2013, the Home Secretary, Theresa May announced that the Government was setting up the Daniel Morgan Independent Panel to review police handling of the murder investigation including:
police involvement in Daniel Morgan’s murder;
the role played by police corruption in protecting those responsible for the murder from being brought to justice and the failure to confront that corruption; and
the incidence of connections between private investigators, police officers and journalists at the News of the Worldand other parts of the media, and alleged corruption involved in the linkages between them
It was in the midst of a bugging operation at Southern Investigations during Operation Nigeria that police became aware of amongst others, two specific journalists using the agency: Alex Marunchak and Mazher Mahmood both ofNews of the World. They launched Operation Two Bridges (an Operation Nigeria spin-off) and further discovered Marunchak was the middleman between Southern Investigations and News of the World. In fact he was so close to Rees, they even registered companies at the same address in Thornton Heath.
Our investigation can further reveal police were in possession of phone records, letters, invoices and receipts going back and forth between Southern Investigations and News International going back many years. One invoice from Fillery addressed DIRECTLY to Mahmood. Dated 30th July 1999 read:
Dear Maz,
Further to our rather enjoyable operation to assist you in France and Belgium, I now take the liberty of enclosing a note of our charges. Our costs are quite high but I have taken such steps as practicable in order to reduce them. For instance, rather than charge our normal rate of 44p each mile, I’ve reduced our time spent traveling to and fro on the ferry. I’ve only charged sufficient to cover fuel and costs. You will see I was obliged to pay an extra £24 to the ferry company in order for us to take a later ferry, although of course, it was cheaper to do this than simply pay for Mel and I to be waiting around in Calais.
Best regards
Sid
Fillery’s letter certainly gives the impression Mahmood and Fillery enjoyed a rather friendly working relationship. The ‘Mel’ mentioned in the letter is believed to be former police officer Melvyn Heraty, who also worked for Southern Investigation.
Another piece of police intelligence that can also be revealed for the first time is a request for security made dated 29th April 1999 by Marunchak on behalf of Mahmood, who was due to appear in court as the prosecution witness in actor John Alford’s cocaine “sting” set-up by Mahmood at the Savoy Hotel in 1997. It is believed one of the Morgan murder suspects were hired as Mahmood’s security at the trial at Snaresbrook Crown Court. Alford was sentenced in May 1999. He was found guilty of supplying the drug to Mahmood but Alford still maintains to this day he is innocent and that he was targeted and entrapped by Mahmood. He is currently appealing against his conviction and has referred his case to the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC).
His lawyer Siobhain Egan said of our investigations:
It is as we have long suspected that the Met knew and repressed information about corrupt relationships between their officers, employees of The News of the World and Southern Investigations. This information was deliberately repressed by the Metropolitan police and should have been disclosed to those representing defendants in the so called “stings” orchestrated by Mazher Mahmood. It is information which should be immediately disclosed to those lawyers advising relevant convicted individuals whose cases are now before the CCRC, and the Daniel Morgan Investigation Panel.
It was Assistant Commissioner Bob Quick at the Metropolitan Police who led both Operation Nigeria and Operation Two Bridges and reported directly up to Assistant Commissioner Andy Hayman.
They both appeared at the Leveson Inquiry in March 2012. Quick submitted a written statement which covered his role in Operations Nigeria and Two Bridges. Of all the core participants who appeared at the inquiry, four paragraphs in Quick’s statement are arguably the most relevant, insightful, as well as the most overlooked evidence given:
During 1999, Anti-Corruption Command was conducting an operation, code named, Operation Nigeria, which was a covert infiltration of office premises operated by Southern Investigations whose proprietors were two men, Jonathan Rees and Sidney Fillery. Both were suspected of involvement of a former partner in the company, Daniel Morgan, who was murdered with an axe in a pub car park in Sydenham in 1987. Fillery had been a former police detective and had worked on the original murder investigation. The objective of this operation was to advance the investigation into the Morgan murder. During the course of Operation Nigeria, it became clear, amongst other criminal activities, Southern Investigations was acting as a clearing house for stories for certain newspapers. Many of these stories were being leaked by police officers who were already suspected of corruption or by unknown officers connected to officers suspected of corruption, who were found to have a relationship with Southern Investigations. A number of journalists were identified as having direct relationships with Southern Investigations. To the best of my recollection these included journalists from papers like The Sun and News of the World but may have included other newspapers. My recollection is one of the journalists suspected was [REDACTED] an executive with News of the World. During the operation it became clear that officers were being paid sums of between £500 and £2000 for stories about celebrities, politicians, and the Royal Family, as well as police investigations.
Matters in Operation Nigeria were brought to a head when evidence emerged that Rees was conspiring with a known criminal to plant cocaine on the criminal’s wife in order to have her prosecuted so as to enable the criminal to win a custody battle over their one year old child. The Operation Nigeria investigations revealed that this conspiracy involved two corrupt Metropolitan police detectives who were actively involved in attempting to pervert the course of justice in order to ensure the conviction and imprisonment of an innocent woman. These events precipitated the end of Operation Nigeria as police were forced to intervene and arrest those involved, thereby revealing Southern Investigations had been infiltrated covertly by police. Rees, two know criminals, and two detectives were arrested and subsequently convicted and imprisoned for these crimes.
Following these events and as a result of Operation Nigeria, in around 2000, I wrote a short report highlighting the role of journalists in promoting corrupt relationships with, and making corrupt payments to officers for stories about famous people and high profile investigations in the MPS. Despite detailed archive searches, the MPS have been unable to provide me with a copy; ordinarily material of this nature would have been destroyed after six years. In my report, I recommended the commencement of an investigation into such activities. I believe my report also names some newspapers but I cannot recall which ones. I proposed an investigation of these newspapers/officers on the basis that I believed that the journalists were not paying bribes out of their own pockets but were either falsely accounting for their expenses and therefore defrauding their employers or, that the newspaper organisations were aware of the reasons for the payments and were themselves complicit in making corrupt payments to police officers.
Quick continues:
I submitted my report to Commander Hayman, who was at the time the head of MPS Professional Standards Department (DPS) and the person I reported to directly. I recall speaking to Hayman about these matters and that he had reservations based on potential evidential difficulties pertaining to privileged material (journalistic material). I did not believe that the circumstances in which these stories were being obtained offered the facility to hide behind the legal protections available to journalists and I recall debating this with him. I’m unable to say whether commander Hayman referred this matter further up the command chain although I was under the impression he had. I did not sense much appetite to launch such an investigation although I felt Hayman was sincere in his reservations at the time. I do recall Hayman making a suggestion that he should visit a particular editor or newspaper and confront them with this intelligence but I do not know what action was taken in this regard.
On close inspection, what Assistant Commander Quick told Leveson was truly remarkable: he was blocked from investigating and prosecuting corrupt police officers and journalists by Commander Hayman and/or “further up the command chain” – that would be the Commissioner himself: John Stevens.
When Commander Andy Hayman submitted his written evidence to the Leveson inquiry, he makes no mention of either Operation Nigeria or Operation Two Bridges, but that’s not where the curiosity ends:
Q (33): To what extent were leaks from the Metropolitan Police Service to the media a problem during your career with the MPS?
Andy Hayman: At the MPS it is the DPS that would investigate reported or suspected leaks to the press or bribery by the press concerning officers. I am informed that during my time as Commander DPS from September 2000 to April 2001 and as Deputy Assistant Commissioner for DPS from April 2002 to December 2002 there was one public complaint made alleging leakage of information to the media by an officer and the result of that investigation that followed was that the complaint was unsubstantiated. I do recall one successful leak investigation which occurred in my time as ACSO and was led by my then Deputy, Peter Clarke. This investigation, which was resource- intensive, resulted in a member of staff being convicted.
Q (34): What systems and procedures were in place to identify, respond to and detect the source of the leaks?
Andy Hayman: Given the size of the MPS and the volume of valuable information it holds, leaks to the media might unfortunately always be a risk, albeit to a small extent.
Q (35): What payments (if any) were considered to be legitimate financial transactions between MPS personnel and the media?
Andy Hayman: I understand that the current Commissioner has included details in his statement of the current regime at the MPS to deal with inappropriate disclosures to the media
Q (90) What levels of awareness and experience were there in the Metropolitan Police Service of “media crime” and in particular: (A) unlawful interception of communications (including the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act); (B) bribery of officials by the media; (C) blackmail; (D) harassment by paparazzi and journalists; (E) traffic and/or public order offences committed by photographers pursuing stories; (F) inciting officials to communicate confidential information held by the MPS/ conspiring with them to obtain such information; and (G) crime within media organizations other than the foregoing (e.g. dishonest expenses claims)?
Andy Hayman: The term “media crime” is not a term I recall as part of operational police terminology. However there are a lot of very experienced officers at the MPS who would have a thorough knowledge of the offences mentioned. Any of the matters listed in the question would be dealt with as an individual allegation, and the relevance of any “media” aspect would be addressed on a case-by-case basis. This might mean seeking guidance from the DPA or restricting access to Crime Reporting Information System (CRIS) or Criminal Intelligence System (CRIMINT) if the matter is sensitive.
Q (91): What sort of priority was given to, and what level of resources are available to deal with the above? (Question 90)
Andy Hayman: Resources for all investigations would be a local matter first and foremost and would depend upon the priority levels set for the type of crime under local policy. For example, It is likely that traffic or public order offences committed by photographers or journalists pursuing stories would be dealt with by borough but leaks to the media would be handled by DPS.
Commissioner John Stevens (now Lord Stevens) also appeared at the Leveson Inquiry in March 2012. The relevant part of his written statement on leaks follows:
Q (31): To what extent were leaks from the MPS to the media a problem during your service with the MPS?
Lord Stevens: I have had considerable experience with problems of leaks of confidential information to the media from my experiences in Northern Ireland and the NCIS Inquiry. On at least one occasion, we had to deal with the issue of leaks immediately prior to making significant arrests. On the plane returning to Belfast we were informed by journalists that they were covering the arrests for the following day. As a result, I was forced to delay the operation by 24 hours. Such leaks in a hostile environment like Northern Ireland could have potentially have life threatening consequences and therefore I was always mindful of them. Inadvertent or deliberate leaking could also severely prejudice the investigations. On this occasion it was known elements in the Security forces were responsible for these leaks (oddly, Lord Stevens makes no mention of leaks at the MPS, as the question asks).
Q (32): What systems and procedures were in place to identify, respond to and detect the sources of leaks?
Lord Stevens: To the best of my recollection during my time as commissioner I was not aware of any specific cases of leaks to the media by individual officers.
Q (33): Whilst you were Commissioner, how many investigations were conducted into actual or suspected leaks from the MPS and how many led to the successful identification of the source of the leak. What was the outcome of the other investigations?
Lord Stevens: Ordinarily, any cases involving leaks to the media would be referred to the Directorate of Professional Standards (DPS), in my time under deputy commissioner Blair. The general stance was that officers who leaked information should be dealt with by the existing disciplinary process and where appropriate arrested and prosecuted. In any organisation as large as the MPS there will always be some that will leak information and use it for their advantage for financial gain. These officers and staff should be ruthlessly weeded out.
Q (34): Was disciplinary action taken against any member of staff (whether civilian or police officer) for leaking information to the media whilst you were commissioner? If so, please identify the number of cases and their outcome. There is no need to identify the person or persons the subject of disciplinary process.
Lord Stevens: During my time as commissioner, there was no leak that could not be dealt with through normal chain of command (referral to DPS) and there was no need to instigate any formal inquiries.
Q (35): What payments (if any) were considered to be legitimate financial transactions between MPS personnel and the media?
Lord Stevens: I made it very clear in the new media policy 19-00 that the MPS would not tolerate any officer who disclosed information to the media for financial gain or favour. If any officer did so they would be dealt with using all the disciplinary and criminal process available. I also implemented a new policy for reporting wrongdoing within the MPS in 2004
Q (37): To what extent do you believe bribery of personnel by the media was a problem for the MPS (if at all)?
Lord Stevens: When i was commissioner there were concerns about bribery of personnel by the media. It was a continual battle to fight this form of corruption. Corruption was always a significant issue during my career, regardless of whether I was commissioner or fulfilling any other operational police role.
Lord Stevens’ statement ironically goes on to say:
We used the media a great deal in our anti-corruption drive. Corrupt personnel read newspapers, watched TV and listened to the radio so we relied on the media to get out anti-corruption message across.
But during Lord Stevens’ cross-examination by the leading counsel for the Leveson Inquiry Robert Jay QC, an astonishing exchange developed:
Robert Jay QC: Were you aware, at the time when you were Deputy Commissioner and/or Commissioner, that the News of the World were extensively using a private investigation company called Southern Investigations?
Lord Stevens: No.
Robert Jay QC: Did there ever come a time when you were aware of that?
Lord Stevens: No.
Robert Jay QC: So does this follow: that you weren’t aware that the News of the World made extensive use of Southern Investigations illegally to obtain information about police officers?
Lord Stevens: No.
Robert Jay QC: You say in your book: “At the end of the 1990s, an independent detective agency called Southern Investigations, based in Sydenham, was frequently coming up on the anti-corruption squad’s radar.” So when did you become aware of that?
Lord Stevens: As Deputy Commissioner, a presentation was made to me to try and get a probe into Southern Investigations’ offices.
Robert Jay QC: …Your book goes on to say: “Eventually, it became possible to monitor conversations and the hidden microphones picked up much intelligence about the activities going on inside. Via the agency, corrupt officers were selling stories about their investigations to newspapers and being paid quite handsome amounts of money, an unsavory business all around.”
Lord Stevens: Yes.
Robert Jay QC: So when did you become aware of that?
Lord Stevens: When prosecutions took place, and one or two people were successfully prosecuted.
Bellingcat has previously disclosed in the same year Assistant Commissioner Quick and his team were investigating Operations Nigeria and Two Bridges, Stevens had a lunch meeting with Dick Fedorcio, Rebekah Brooks and ALEX MARUNCHAK:
The incoming MPS Commissioner John Stevens wanted to encourage positive press through a closer relationship with national newspapers. His Director of Public Affairs, Dick Fedorcio was in favour of Stevens’ new strategy. A key lunch meeting was convened early in 2000 comprising Stevens, Fedorcio, Rebekah Wade and Alex Marunchak. Was this the crucial point where MPS-NOTW common goals and mutual benefits were mapped out? What exactly was on the table for discussion? Who was grooming who? From that point, MPS and NOTW enjoyed a special relationship of collaboration, particularly in standing up Mazher Mahmood stings. Commissioner Stevens generous dealings with NOTW were not universally popular with hard-pressed working MPS police officers though:
One senior police officer recalls the sort of collaboration that went on with News International in the early 2000s. ‘There was a time when they were all over us’ he says. ‘Mazher Mahmood was forever giving us jobs, and us coming in on the back of it. It was always a fait accompli, there was no question of us saying – Hang on, is this one a sensible use of our time and resources? We just had to get on with it. The Commander at the time was quite aware of it. It was generally their management talking to our management, but it always came through a chain of command down to us on the shop floor.
It gets worse. Just two years after Operations Nigeria and Two Bridges in 2002, and in a period of two months between April and June – events took place that will define the whole scandal: the hacking of school girl Milly Dowler and the surveillance of Detective Chief Superintendent David Cook who at the time was leading the Daniel Morgan murder case.
Phone hacking went on to grow on an industrial scale and to the point where even the Royal Family and their circle became targets. The police moved in but ONLY to prosecuted the Royal hackings – and bury evidence up to 4,000 others – including Dowler’s. Who was overseeing the police operation? Commander Andy Hayman.
The MPS’ line has always been resources were too stretched fighting terrorism, despite already having the evidence under their noses. It was through the sheer tenacity of the Guardian journalist Nick Davies with his front page revelation of the Dowler hacking that the dam finally burst for the MPS and News International.
Meanwhile, the surveillance of DCS Dave Cook was instigated by Alex Marunchak. In March 2012 he wrote in Press Gazzette:
I received information from a source that then minor BBC Crimewatch personality Jacqui Hames was having an affair with a senior officer who was appearing on her TV show.
For the avoidance of doubt, I did nothing to check this, because it was of no interest to me.
I did not look at cuttings, because I had no time, and I was editing the Irish News of the World. But I passed the tittle-tattle on to the London newsdesk as a bit of gossip, which had been passed on to me, and left it to them to deal with as they saw fit.
I do not know to this day what checks they carried out, if any at all, or indeed if they did anything about the information. Nor did I ask them to keep me posted with progress or developments. End of story.
But I do know that I did nothing more than have a 30 second conversation passing on the rumour to the London newsdesk and that was the end of my involvement.
Nick Davies wrote in the Guardian in 2011:
The targeting of Cook began following his appearance on BBC Crimewatch on 26 June 2002, when he appealed for information to solve the murder of Morgan, who had been found dead in south London 15 years earlier. Rees and Fillery were among the suspects. The following day, Cook was warned by the Yard that they had picked up intelligence that Fillery had been in touch with Marunchak and that Marunchak agreed to “sort Cook out”. A few days later, Cook was contacted by Surrey police, where he had worked as a senior detective from 1996 to 2001, and was told that somebody claiming to work for the Inland Revenue had contacted their finance department, asking for Cook’s home address so that they could send him a cheque with a tax refund. The finance department had been suspicious and refused to give out the information. It is now known that at that time, the News of the World’s investigator, Glenn Mulcaire, succeeded in obtaining Cook’s home address, his internal payroll number at the Metropolitan police, his date of birth and figures for the amount that he and his wife were paying for their mortgage. All of this appears to have been blagged by Mulcaire from confidential databases, apparently including the Met’s own records. Mulcaire obtained the mobile phone number for Cook’s wife and the password she used for her mobile phone account. Paperwork in the possession of the Yard’s Operation Weeting is believed to show that Mulcaire did this on the instructions of Greg Miskiw, the paper’s assistant editor and a close friend of Marunchak. About a week later, a van was seen parked outside Cook’s home. The following day, two vans were seen there. Both of them attempted to follow Cook as he took his two-year-old son to nursery. Cook alerted Scotland Yard, who sent a uniformed officer to stop one of the vans on the grounds that its rear brake light was broken. The driver proved to be a photojournalist working for the News of the World. Both vans were leased to the paper. During the same week, there were signs of an attempt to open letters which had been left in Cook’s external postbox. Scotland Yard chose not to mount a formal inquiry. Instead a senior press officer contacted Brooks to ask for an explanation. She is understood to have told them they were investigating a report that Cook was having an affair with another officer, Jacqui Hames, the presenter of BBC Crimewatch. Yard sources say they rejected this explanation, because Cook had been married to Hames for some years; the couple had two children, then aged two and five; and they had previously appeared together as a married couple in published stories.”The story was complete rubbish,” according to one source.
Intriguingly, on the very same day Jacqui Hames appeared at the Leveson Inquiry to give evidence, the MPS press office released a statement that they had loaned a retired police horse to Rebekah Brooks. This diverted press coverage from Hames’s evidence which was far more damaging. Hames broke down in tears and accused News International of colluding with Southern Investigations.
After their departure from the MPS, both Lord Stevens and Andy Hayman were hired to write columns for News International titles News of the Worldand The Times respectively.
When Rebekah Brooks stood in the newsroom and announced to staff the closure of News of the World in 2011, she told them:
In a year you will understand why we made this decision
Was Brooks implying there were more revelations to come besides phone hacking, and was it Operation Two Bridges?
Mark Lewis from Seddons, and lawyer for the Dowler family, remarks:
As the Fake Sheikh might have said “we’ve passed our file to the Police”. Remember, Rebekah Brookes warned that there was worse to come, we’re still at the entrance, what’s inside is far murkier. The extent of cover up, corruption and collusion is astonishing. Truth will out.
Dr Evan Harris, Associate Director of Hacked Off, said:
These revelations show just how important it will be for the second part of the Leveson Inquiry to take place after all the criminal trials on hacking matters have taken place. The first part of the Leveson Inquiry was prevented from looking into relationship between the police and press because of impending prosecutions, but there can be no more serious allegations than those of large-scale police corruption, and multiple cover-ups.
This post originally appeared on the ¿Bellingcat blog and is reproduced with permission and thanks
