Thread: Police under fire as trial collapses over 'agent provocateur

Police under fire as trial collapses over 'agent provocateur' claims

By Michael Savage
Tuesday, 11 January 2011



PC Mark Kennedy infiltrated a group of protesters accused of targeting a power station in Nottinghamshire

Scotland Yard has come under pressure to reveal the extent of its covert surveillance of peaceful protesters after the collapse of a case following the unmasking of an undercover police officer.

Prosecutors announced they were dropping charges against six people accused of a 2009 plot to shut down the coal-fired Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station, in Nottinghamshire, at Nottingham Crown Court yesterday.

Lawyers acting for the protesters had demanded that the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) should be forced by the trial judge to reveal what role the undercover officer, PC Mark Kennedy, had played in aiding and encouraging the break-in.

The defence team was told on Friday that the prosecution was to drop the case rather than hand over details of PC Kennedy's involvement.

A recent video of PC Kennedy talking to an activist suggests he was not the only officer infiltrating green activist groups. In the video shown on BBC's Newsnight programme last night he tells an activist: "I'm not the only one by a long shot – it's like a hammer to crack a nut. It's spun in different ways but, you know, you start looking at the way the law is used and manipulated."

Activists first suggested they had unmasked the officer's real identity in October. Since beginning his covert work in 2000, he had assumed the identity of Mark Stone and earned the nickname "Flash" because he seemed to have more money than his fellow protesters. He was quickly put to use by the groups he infiltrated because of his driving skills. He was also a keen climber, who has been photographed scaling pylons as part of anti-climate change protests. PC Kennedy subsequently fled overseas and left the Metropolitan Police. Some suspect he is now in the United States. There was no reply from a string of email addresses and mobile numbers he had used over the last decade. However, he has been in touch with lawyers defending the six protesters due to go on trial yesterday and had recently indicated he was willing to give evidence to help their case. All six claimed they had never finally agreed to aid the Ratcliffe protest.

The extent of the Met officer's involvement in helping to organise protests led some to accuse the police of entrapment. Bradley Day, 23, a charity worker who has already faced trial for his involvement in the Ratcliffe-on-Soar plot, said PC Kennedy had even paid to hire a van used to transport equipment.

Mr Day added that, last January, PC Kennedy had accompanied protesters on a reconnaissance trip to the power station. However, police waited for four months before taking action. They arrested more than 100 people on 13 April last year when they raided a meeting of activists held at Iona School in Sneinton, Nottingham. Mike Schwarz, the solicitor for the six protesters who saw the case against them dropped, said police and the CPS had chosen to "hush up" details of the covert operation. He said the Metropolitan Police should be forced to explain their policy for monitoring protest groups, adding that a miscarriage of justice had been averted only when activists found a passport revealing PC Kennedy's identity.

"There should now be a publicly accountable process about how we came so close to a miscarriage of justice here, if his identity had not been uncovered by protesters," Mr Schwarz said. "The ball is in the court of the police to answer a number of questions on the use of undercover officers to monitor peaceful protesters. The police have still yet to explain PC Kennedy's role."

The CPS denied the collapse of the trial was triggered by the unmasking of PC Kennedy. A spokesman for the Met said the force was "not prepared to discuss" PC Kennedy's involvement.

Danny Chivers, a defendant in the trial, said the police must be forced to answer questions about how they went about the operation. "The police appear to have waited for the opportunity to arrest over 100 people," he said. "Political protest of the kind being planned that day presents no risk to the public, yet the police consistently resort to the most extreme tactics they can muster."

There were calls for Theresa May, the Home Secretary, to answer questions in Parliament about the undercover officer. David Winnick, a Labour member of the Commons Home Affairs committee, said she needed to answer accusations that PC Kennedy had acted as an "agent provocateur".

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/cr ... 81118.html

Teenage student protester who hurled a fire extinguisher during the tuition fees riots is jailed for 2 years and 8 months

By Charlotte Gill
Last updated at 1:41 AM on 13th January 2011
Comments 849

An A-level student who hurled a fire extinguisher off a roof was yesterday jailed for more than two and a half years, after a judge praised his distraught mother for handing him in.

Tania Garwood drove her 18-year-old son Edward Woollard to a police station hours after he confessed to lobbing the one-stone canister from the top of the Tory Party HQ during a tuition fees riot.

Yesterday the 37-year-old broke down in court as her son was jailed for two years and eight months after the judge told him it was ‘exceedingly fortunate’ that no one had been killed or seriously hurt


Tough love: Tania Garwood arrives at court withher son Edward Woollard before he was sentenced to two years and eight months in jail. Carol Saldinack knows how she feels after turning two of her sons in
She was comforted by her second husband, Michael, as she sat in the public gallery wracked with sobs, surrounded by friends and family.
Woollard, a sixth-former at Brockenhurst College in the New Forest, had travelled to London on a coach with fellow students on November 10 last year to join a protest organised by the National Union of Students against the rise in tuition fees.


Building bridges: Carol Saldinack's sons haven't spoken to her since she turned them in to the police. It remains to be seen if Edward Woollard and his mother Tania Garwood remain on speaking terms following his custodial sentence

The march had started peacefully and video at the start of the demonstration showed Woollard, of Dibden Purlieu, Hampshire, dancing with other protesters.

But when a splinter group smashed down the glass frontage of 30 Millbank and made their way on to the roof, Woollard followed the throng to the top of the building.

When another protester put down a fire extinguisher which he had been spraying over the crowd, Woollard picked it up and carried on spraying until it was empty before throwing it off the seventh-floor rooftop towards police officers and protesters below.

Scroll down for video


Dangerous: Tania Garwood has been praised for turning in her son after he threw the extinguisher from the roof of Millbank Tower



Near miss: The canister missed police below by inches. Tania Garwood said that her son should be punished, but one wonders if she regrets her actions after he was sentenced to two years and eight months in jail?
Judge Geoffrey Rivlin QC told him: ‘The televised recording of the incident shows that this heavy fire extinguisher fell terrifyingly close to a group of police officers – just a few feet away.

‘It is in my judgment exceedingly fortunate that your action did not result in death or very serious injury either to a police officer or a fellow protester.’



Poised: Wollard was pictured brandishing the extinguisher moments before hurling it to the ground. Edward Woollard has apologised and show remorse for his actions, something Carol Saldinack doesn't believe her sons have done to date



Moment of madness: Woollard was 'high-spirited and excited' as he sprayed the extinguisher before launching it several storeys below
‘Nevertheless I shall take into account in your favour the extraordinary and courageous conduct of your mother, which resulted in you giving yourself up to the police so quickly.’

He also acknowledged Woollard’s age, early guilty plea and good references, but added: ‘It is deeply regrettable, indeed a shocking thing, for a court to have to sentence a young man such as you to a substantial term of custody.

‘But the courts have a duty to provide the community with such protection from violence as they can and this means sending out a very clear message to anyone minded to behave in this way that an offence of this seriousness will not be tolerated.

EDWARD WOOLLARD'S APOLOGY: 'I DIDN'T MEAN TO HURT ANYBODY'
When I was told I had potentially endangered people, I felt sick.

Someone partially emptied a fire extinguisher, I then took the fire extinguisher and I emptied the rest.

When the extinguisher was emptied, I lobbed it to go into a gap in the crowd below.

I was absolutely not intending that anyone in any way would be hurt.

Very soon afterwards, I realised it was something I should not have done. I regret bitterly what I did.

‘The right of peaceful protest is a precious one. Those who abuse it and use the occasion to indulge in serious violence must expect a lengthy sentence of immediate custody.’
Woollard will serve half his sentence in custody in a Young Offenders’ Institution.
Mrs Garwood persuaded her son to give himself up after Sky News broadcast a picture of him as the protester who threw the fire extinguisher five days after the protest.
In a statement to police after his arrest, Woollard said: ‘’Very soon after [throwing the canister] I realised it was something I should not have done and I regret bitterly what I did.

'When I was told I had potentially endangered people I felt sick. I would like to apologise to the people who felt endangered and were endangered.’
His mother declined to comment afterwards but said earlier that he deserved to be punished.

Mrs Garwood, said she feared the incident had ruined his life, telling The Times this week:

‘I brought up my children to take responsibility for their actions and he has. I believe he deserves to be punished. I just hope it is the right punishment.

‘He is a loving, caring, gentle man. He has got a lot to give, he has got a lot to learn. I hope he has got the chance to continue his education and it hasn’t ruined his life.’

Video at the link:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... onths.html