The independent body set up to investigate alleged miscarriages of justice has cleared a man who has spent most of the past seven years in prison, after its investigators discovered evidence of police corruption.
The corrupt detectives are believed to have penetrated the national criminal intelligence service as well as helping frame Erkin Guney for heroin possession. They are not to be prosecuted or publicly identified, although the Metropolitan police states they are no longer serving officers.
The appeal court last week agreed to keep secret what the criminal cases review commission had discovered.
In a highly unusual ruling, Lord Justice Kennedy said his judgment would be "revealing very little of the reasoning which has persuaded this court to allow an appeal".
He said sources of information might be endangered if he were to disclose the facts about "officers who played an important part in gathering intelligence". But "substantial doubts had been cast upon [their] integrity".
The commission is overloaded and took four years to investigate Mr Guney's claims, but said it discovered evidence that "discredited" a detective handler of an informant. The commission has the power to obtain police documents.
Last June it referred the case back to the appeal court, which in 1998 rejected an appeal by Mr Guney, sentenced to 14 years jail in 1996. The commission sent the court a confidential dossier.
Throughout the proceedings, police and the crown prosecution service repeatedly refused to disclose allegedly sensitive background information on the source of a tip-off that led members of the then Stoke Newington drugs squad to raid Mr Guney's house and look for bags of heroin in his wardrobe.
The appeal court said: "On September 28 1995 the drug squad received an intelligence report that the appellant was involved in the distribution of heroin and may have some at his home in Ilford. Shortly before the trial was due to begin, the crown obtained a ruling from the trial judge in relation to material leading to the intelligence report that further material did not have to be disclosed.". ....read more
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2003/may/30/ukcrime1
The corrupt detectives are believed to have penetrated the national criminal intelligence service as well as helping frame Erkin Guney for heroin possession. They are not to be prosecuted or publicly identified, although the Metropolitan police states they are no longer serving officers.
The appeal court last week agreed to keep secret what the criminal cases review commission had discovered.
In a highly unusual ruling, Lord Justice Kennedy said his judgment would be "revealing very little of the reasoning which has persuaded this court to allow an appeal".
He said sources of information might be endangered if he were to disclose the facts about "officers who played an important part in gathering intelligence". But "substantial doubts had been cast upon [their] integrity".
The commission is overloaded and took four years to investigate Mr Guney's claims, but said it discovered evidence that "discredited" a detective handler of an informant. The commission has the power to obtain police documents.
Last June it referred the case back to the appeal court, which in 1998 rejected an appeal by Mr Guney, sentenced to 14 years jail in 1996. The commission sent the court a confidential dossier.
Throughout the proceedings, police and the crown prosecution service repeatedly refused to disclose allegedly sensitive background information on the source of a tip-off that led members of the then Stoke Newington drugs squad to raid Mr Guney's house and look for bags of heroin in his wardrobe.
The appeal court said: "On September 28 1995 the drug squad received an intelligence report that the appellant was involved in the distribution of heroin and may have some at his home in Ilford. Shortly before the trial was due to begin, the crown obtained a ruling from the trial judge in relation to material leading to the intelligence report that further material did not have to be disclosed.". ....read more
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2003/may/30/ukcrime1
