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Are there any other examples of British whistleblowers who broke the Official Secrets Act and were pardoned? I can't imagine that David Cameron is going to par
by junto 11y ago
Are there any other examples of British whistleblowers who broke the Official Secrets Act and were pardoned?
I can't imagine that David Cameron is going to pardon this and 'make a mockery' of both the British Navy and the OSA.
This is not my opinion I hasten to add, but the British government tends to be pretty militant when it cones to this kind of thing. The OSA is treated as 'sacrosanct'.
The ex-MI5 officer David Shayler had a similar situation, when he released the information about the state sponsored assassination attempt on Libya's Gadaffi: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Shayler http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Shayler
At the trial Shayler represented himself, claiming that
the Official Secrets Act was incompatible with the Human
Rights Act and that it was not a crime to report a crime
although these arguments were dismissed by the court with
the latter being ruled irrelevant. Shayler's defence
attempted to argue that there were no other avenues to
pursue his concerns with the service and its performance.
The judge ruled that while this was true it was irrelevant.
The judge instructed the jury to return a guilty verdict
and that the House of Lords had ruled in another case that
a defendant could not argue that he had revealed information
in the public interest. After more than three hours of
deliberation the jury found him guilty.
In November 2002 he was sentenced to 6 months in prison,
of which he served three weeks in Belmarsh prison and just
under five weeks in Ford Open Prison, with the four months
served on remand in France being taken into consideration.
- andyjohnson0 11y agoKatherine Gun [1]. She was prosecuted, but the case quickly collapsed. Not a pardon though - they are very rarely used in the UK. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katharine_Gun http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katharine_Gun