http://www.hs.fi/ulkomaat/artikkeli/Bri ... 5262980971

Brittipoliisi katuu vakoiluaan ympäristöaktivistina

LONTOO. Britannian ympäristöliikkeeseen seitsemäksi vuodeksi soluttautunut poliisi on eronnut tehtävästään ja luvannut puolustaa ympäristöaktivisteja oikeudessa.

40-vuotias Mark Kennedy myös katuu toimiaan poliisin "myyränä".

Alkuviikosta kuutta brittiläistä ympäristöaktivistia vastaan nostettu oikeusjuttu kaatui todennäköisesti juuri Kennedyn lausuntojen ansiosta.

Kennedy soluttautui Earth First -ympäristöliikkeeseen valehenkilöyden turvin vuonna 2003. Mark Stone -nimeä käyttänyt poliisi saavutti nopeasti aktivistien luottamuksen ja osallistui useisiin suoran toiminnan iskuihin 2000-luvulla. Samaan aikaan hän syötti tietoa poliisille.

Kennedy pääsi mukaan iskuja järjestäneeseen sisäpiiriin ja oli järjestämässä esimerkiksi Britannian ympäristöjärjestöjen yhteistä Climate Camp -leiriä. Kennedy ei ollut vain tarkkailija, vaan hän oli mukana toteuttamassa useita väkivallattomia iskuja.

Soluttautumista vauhditti se, että vuorikiipeilijäksi tekeytyneellä miehellä oli auto, rahaa ja miellyttävä luonne. Peräti parisataa ympäristöaktivistia osallistui "Stonen" 40-vuotissyntymäpäiville, jotka kestivät useita päiviä.

Syksyllä 2010 Kennedyn kaksoiselämä paljastui hänen aktivistiystävilleen, jotka olivat vahingossa löytäneet hänen oikean passinsa.

The Guardian -lehden haastattelema aktivisti kertoi Stonen tunnustaneen ja itkeneen paljastumisen jälkeen. Kaikesta päätellen Kennedy oli alkanut nauttia aktivistielämästä ja luonut vahvoja ystävyyssuhteita.

"Vihaan itseäni siitä, että olen pettänyt niin monen luottamuksen", Kennedy sanoi syksyllä aktivistiystävälleen. Nauhoitettu puhelinkeskustelu toistettiin Britannian yleisradioyhtiön BBC:n ajankohtaisohjelmassa.

Kennedyn tapaus on herättänyt Britanniassa keskustelua poliisin järeistä toimista ympäristöliikettä vastaan.

Pelkästään Kennedyn soluttautuminen maksoi poliisille noin 300 000 euroa vuodessa. Aktivistien mukaan Kennedy olisi tunnustanut heille, ettei hän suinkaan ole ainoa soluttautuja ympäristöliikkeessä.

"On kyse pitkäaikaisesta poliisioperaatiosta . . . Kyseessä ei ole terroristijärjestö. Tämä herättää vakavan kysymyksen toimien suhteellisuudesta", sanoi Englannin ja Walesin entinen syyttäjäviraston johtaja Ken Macdonald BBC:lle.

Tarkoitus oli tästäkin artikkeli kirjoittaa, mutta menköön nyt tänne.

Mark Kennedy: A journey from undercover cop to 'bona fide' activist

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2 ... p-activist? 

No one suspected Mark Kennedy was undercover when he joined environmental activists – but has he now switched sides?


Mark Kennedy didn't seem any different from the other activists – but in fact he was an undercover policeman.

He turned up with long hair, tattoos and an insatiable appetite for climbing trees. Few people suspected anything odd of the man who introduced himself as Mark Stone on a dairy farm turned spiritual sanctuary in North Yorkshire.

He had come alone on 12 August 2003, in the middle of a heatwave, for a gathering of environmental activists known as Earth First.

Apart from the fact that "Stone" was apparently well-paid and ate meat, he appeared no different from the hundreds of other activists who gathered under marquees to smoke weed, play guitars and plan protests.

What no one could have known was that, despite appearances, the 33-year-old "freelance climber" was actually PC Mark Kennedy, an undercover police officer beginning an audacious operation to live deep undercover among environmental activists.

The Guardian can reveal just how successful – and controversial – the operation was.

From that day Kennedy would live a remarkable double life lasting more than seven years. So embedded in the protest community did he become that about 200 people turned up for a joint celebration of his 40th birthday, described as a "three-day bender" on a farm.

All were, of course, oblivious that Kennedy was feeding back detailed reports to his police commanders as he participated in, and sometimes even organised, some of the most high-profile demonstrations of the past decade.

He took part in almost every major environmental protest in the UK from 2003, and also managed to infiltrate groups of anti-racists, anarchists and animal rights protesters.

Using a fake passport, Kennedy visited more than 22 countries, taking part in protests against the building of a dam in Iceland, touring Spain with eco-activists, and penetrating anarchist networks in Germany and Italy.

It was a career that involved breaking into power stations, invading airports and – according to legal papers – concluded in an operation in which he now stands accused of crossing the boundary from spy to agent provocateur.

Kennedy's personal journey also appears to have ended with a remarkable twist. In recent weeks, after protesters discovered his hidden identity and circulated news that he was a police agent, Kennedy is said to have "gone native". He has expressed remorse to betrayed friends and is seeking some way of securing redemption.

Kennedy's career as a police constable in the Metropolitan police began around 1994. It was almost 10 years later – in early 2003 – that he was selected as a candidate for a classified operation.

Police have been infiltrating protest movements for decades, but Kennedy was to be one of the first to work for the newly formed National Public Order Intelligence Unit, which monitors so-called "domestic extremists".

That summer he was issued with a driving licence and passport bearing his new identity – Mark Stone – and a plausible backstory that explained his long absences. Claiming to be a professional climber, Kennedy told people he encountered in Nottingham – many of them connected to Earth First – that he often had well-paid work abroad.

Kennedy had two assets that, in the years to come, would make him indispensable to protesters. First, he could drive, and had a dark blue pick-up truck. Second, he was generous with his money, agreeing to pay for campaign literature, rented vans and fines imposed on activists in magistrates courts. His largesse would eventually earn him his best-known nickname, Flash.

Almost a year after he first emerged in Nottingham, Kennedy began gaining the trust of activists. In 2004 he became involved in Dissent!, a network preparing for protests against the following year's G8 Summit in Gleneagles.

In 2005 he scaled trees in London, to hang a banner protesting against BP, then travelled to Scotland, where his van was used to ship equipment to an eco-camp near Stirling. After G8 came to an end, Kennedy vanished to Iceland to campaign against the construction of a dam.

He was becoming well-known among protesters, including Alex Long, a member of the London-based Wombles anarchist collective, who had met him the previous year.

Looking back, Long said, Kennedy was "too good to be true – the perfect activist". "He would be your best mate, but not in a contrived way," he said. "If he walked in right now, I'd say to him: 'Mark, how you doing?' and then only seconds later I'd think, oh, I forgot, you're a cop."

By all accounts Kennedy rarely expressed political views, instead taking an interest in the practicalities of protest.

Craig Logan, 37, who unwittingly became a close friend of the undercover officer, said he had "no great powers of oratory" but made friends quickly. "He was funny, friendly – if a bit blokey," he said. "He would go out of his way for people." He agreed that Kennedy's van – and his money – quickly helped him to ingratiate himself with the community.

Conscious of police surveillance, activists keep those who know about the logistics of a protest "action" to a small circle. For practical reasons, those in the know typically include people responsible for transport.

By the summer of 2006, Kennedy's life as an activist was complete. He entered the circle of people planning the first of the annual Climate Camp gatherings, helping to set up the encampment near the Drax coal-fired power station in North Yorkshire. Around the same time he chained himself to Hartlepool nuclear power station and climbed a crane at Didcot power station.

At the following year's Climate Camp, Kennedy was trusted enough to be given the important role of organising transport needed to set up a camp near Heathrow.

But by Climate Camp 2008 – when activists gathered near Kingsnorth power station, in Kent – the undercover police officer's appetite for action was raising suspicions. Kennedy volunteered to be the driver in an action that saw 29 activists successfully hijack a train delivering 1,000 tonnes of coal to Drax. Behind his back, some protesters began calling him "Detective Stone".

"I was quite shocked," said Long. "That is just about the worst thing you can say about an activist."

It was not until 12 April 2009, when Kennedy's uniformed colleagues stormed into a school in the suburbs of Nottingham, that his double life began to unravel.

Police had been tipped off – presumably by Kennedy – that some activists planned to break into the nearby Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station, a coal-fired plant owned by E.ON. In a £300,000 operation police swooped into a school building where protesters had gathered on the eve of the invasion.

Inside, they found 114 activists including Kennedy, who had travelled from the London G20 protests. Twenty protesters were eventually convicted for the minor crime of conspiracy to commit trespass after they admitted they had planned to occupy the plant for a week, thereby preventing the emission of 150,000 tonnes of carbon.

Handing down "lenient" sentences last week at Nottingham crown court, a judge said the intended protest would have been peaceful and safe, and recognised the activists were "decent" people with "the highest possible motives".

Kennedy, it seems, was the exception. For four months he had played a key role in planning the action, leading a reconnaissance mission and giving advice on the best way to break into the site.

"We needed someone who could drive and we needed someone we could trust. Mark felt like that person," said Bradley Day, 23, who worked with Kennedy on the mission.

Kennedy allowed his house to be used for planning meetings and, days before the protest was due to take place he used his fake ID to pay £778 to hire a 7.5-tonne truck to transport equipment. Those around said they became increasingly aware of his desire for the protest to go ahead.

When a heavy police presence was reported outside the power station, activists considered abandoning the protest, but nominated Kennedy to drive out to see how big a threat they posed. When he returned, he told the group there was no police presence at all. The arrests followed soon after.

Immediately some suspected Kennedy, who may have been having his own regrets. "I remember being awake at about eight the next morning and seeing Mark sitting at the bottom of the stairs with his head in his hands," said one activist who slept on Kennedy's floor.

Suspicions grew when Kennedy – among 27 activists who were charged – declined to use the same law firm as the others. Charges against him, but not the others, were then dropped. But it was a chance discovery of his real passport, bearing the surname Kennedy, months later that put activists on a trail that would eventually lead them to documents confirming he was a police officer.

Six of Kennedy's close friends confronted him in a house in Nottingham in the early hours of 21 October last year. He confessed, breaking down in tears and expressing regret for the pain he had caused. He told those present that he was not the only officer deep undercover in the protest movement, costing the taxpayer £250,000 a year per agent.

Those claims – along with his apparent remorse – were not believed by everyone present. "He is duplicitous. He was undercover for seven years. I didn't trust a word of what he was saying," said one activist.

Kennedy is now living abroad, but recent developments suggest his desire for redemption is sincere. In email exchanges with activists and their lawyer, Kennedy talked of taking a "leap of faith", giving the defence evidence that would "assist" them. "I want to help," he said.

Three weeks ago, Kennedy suddenly pulled out and ceased communications, but not before expressing an abiding concern. "I don't want this ever to happen to anyone ever again," he said. "What's happened is really wrong."

Undercover officer spied on green activists

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/jan/0 ... -activists

Guardian investigation reveals details of PC Mark Kennedy's infiltration of dozens of protest groups



Mark Kennedy has since quit the Met, telling his friends that what he did was wrong. Photograph: Guardian

A police officer who for seven years lived deep undercover at the heart of the environmental protest movement, travelling to 22 countries gleaning information and playing a frontline role in some of the most high-profile confrontations, has quit the Met, telling his friends that what he did was wrong.

PC Mark Kennedy, a Metropolitan police officer, infiltrated dozens of protest groups including anti-racist campaigners and anarchists, a Guardian investigation reveals.

Legal documents suggest Kennedy's activities went beyond those of a passive spy, prompting activists to ask whether his role in organising and helping to fund protests meant he turned into an agent provocateur.

Kennedy first adopted the fake identity Mark Stone in 2003, pretending to be a professional climber, in order to disrupt the UK's peaceful movement to combat climate change. Then aged 33, he grew long hair and sported earrings and tattoos, before going on to attend almost every major demonstration in the UK up to the G20 protests in London. He was issued with a fake passport and driving licence.

Sensitive details about Kennedy's activities had been set to be raised in Nottingham crown court in legal argument relating to a case of six activists accused of conspiring to break into Ratcliffe-on-Soar coal-fired power station.

But prosecutors unexpectedly abandoned the trial after they were asked to disclose classified details about the role the undercover officer played in organising and helping to fund the protest.

Kennedy, who recently resigned from the Met, is understood to be torn over his betrayal, telling one activist that his infiltration had been "really wrong". "I'll just say I'm sorry, for everything," Kennedy said. "It really hurts."

Apparently keen for redemption, Kennedy indicated he would "help" the defendants during their trial and was in touch with their lawyer. He backed out three weeks ago, citing his concern for the safety of his family and himself.

The Met could face pressure to explain the ethics of deploying an officer so deep undercover. It has been repeatedly criticised for its handling of protests. A Metropolitan police spokesman said: "We are not prepared to discuss the matter."

Kennedy is believed to have been one of at least two undercover operatives working for the National Public Order Intelligence Unit, an agency that monitors so-called domestic extremists. He told friends each undercover spy cost £250,000 a year.

The officer was found out in October after friends, some of whom had grown suspicious about a seemingly "perfect activist", discovered a passport bearing his real name. They eventually unearthed documentary proof that he had been a policeman since around 1994, and, confronted with the evidence, Kennedy confessed. He is now living abroad.

Police arrested 114 activists at a school near Nottingham in April 2009 in a controversial operation to prevent activists from breaking into the Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station the next day.

Twenty-six activists were later charged with conspiracy to commit aggravated trespass. Of those, 20 admitted they planned to break into the power station to prevent the emission of around 150,000 tonnes of carbon.

They were convicted after failing to convince a jury their actions were designed to prevent immediate greater harm from climate change. Handing down lenient sentences last week, a judge said they had been acting with "the highest possible motives".

It is widely presumed that Kennedy tipped off police about the protest. But activists who spent four months working with Kennedy to hatch the plan now question whether he crossed a boundary and became an agent provocateur.

The allegation was set to emerge during the trial of the six defendants who – unlike the other activists – maintained that they had not yet agreed to break into the power station. According to legal papers drawn up by their lawyers, Kennedy helped to organise the demonstration from an early stage, driving on reconnaissance trips of the power station and suggesting the "best and easiest way" to get into the plant.

"He continued to participate, including hiring, paying for and driving a vehicle and volunteering to be one of two principal climbers who would attach himself to the [coal-carrying] conveyor belt. He actively encouraged participation in the action and expressed the view that he was pleased it was going to be an action of some significance," the papers say.

The documents state that planning meetings for the protest took place at Kennedy's house and he paid the court fees of another activist arising from a separate demonstration. "It is assumed that the finance for the accommodation, the hire of vehicles and the paying of fines came from police funds," they state.

Lawyers for the activists submitted their demand for material about Kennedy's role last Monday. The CPS confirmed it would not proceed with the trial, stating that "previously unavailable information" that undermined its case had come to light.

It said there was no longer sufficient evidence for a realistic prospect of prosecution.

"I have no doubt that our attempts to get disclosure about Kennedy's role has led to the collapse of the trial," said Mike Schwarz, a solicitor at the Bindmans law firm who represented the activists.

"It is no coincidence that just 48 hours after we told the CPS our clients could not receive a fair trial unless they disclosed material about Kennedy, they halted the prosecution. Given that Kennedy was, until recently, willing to assist the defence, one has to ask if the police were facing up to the possibility their undercover agent had turned native."

Undercover police officer Mark Kennedy at centre of international row

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2 ... sm-protest

Questions asked over officer in German and Irish parliaments as new allegations of sexual activity surface


Undercover police officer Mark Kennedy is at the centre of a growing international row over his actions. Photograph: Guardian

The international row surrounding the undercover police officer Mark Kennedy intensified today as politicians across Europe demanded information about his activities and new allegations surfaced about the scope of his sexual activity.

In a day of dramatic developments, Kennedy, the Metropolitan police officer at the centre of a growing controversy over the infiltration of peaceful environmental groups, emerged as a key figure in protest movements spanning several European countries, including Ireland, Iceland, Germany, Italy and Spain.

German politician Andrej Hunko said Kennedy had been "operating on the border of illegality" in Germany claiming he had worked as an "agent provocateur" among anti-fascist groups there. He also said that Kennedy, who visited Germany at least five times between 2004 and 2009 according to activists, may have been feeding information to the German police.

"Kennedy wanted to infiltrate anti-fascists, and as an agent provocateur to instigate actions together with them. I suspect then, that it wasn't Scotland Yard that focused his interest on the 'hot spots' of the German anti-fascist scene. I see proof instead of the opposite, that the German police were involved in the operation of this British agent."

In Ireland Labour foreign affairs spokesman Michael D Higgins called on the minister for justice Dermot Ahern to issue a statement on Kennedy's activities after it emerged he had travelled to the country at least five times between 2004 and 2006, linking up with activists in Dublin, Cork and Mayo.

One Irish activist, who met Kennedy several times and who put him up in Dublin in 2006, said the undercover officer acted as a "facilitator" between different protest groups from Ireland the UK and Iceland: "He did a lot with logistics because he had a van and helped move stuff around a lot," said the man who did not want to be identified. "He was not a major strategist but he was very good at linking people and different groups together."

Kennedy also spent time in Iceland forging close links with the Saving Iceland campaign group. He introduced members of this group to activists in Ireland and in the summer of 2005 he attended a gathering of direct action campaigners in Reykjavik. Jason Kirkpatrick, a documentary film-maker and former friend of Kennedy's, said he returned from the trip boasting he had been there training other activists in direct action techniques.

"He showed me a video of him training people in lock-down techniques," said Kirkpatrick, who lives in Germany. "The Icelandic protesters had asked for help from the movement in the UK and Mark was one of the ones that went over to train people. I remember he was laughing about the Icelandic police because they had never seen protesters locked to lorries before and the police did not know what to do."

Kennedy also spent time in Spain, France and Italy sometimes travelling under the guise of a "freelance climber" at other times openly connected to Dissent!, an international network of local groups organising opposition to the G8 summit at Gleneagles, Perthshire, in July 2005.

It is during these trips that he is alleged to have had several sexual relationships with other activists. Today Jean, 36, an environmental activist based in France who met Kennedy several times, told the Guardian: "It is well known in the movement that Kennedy slept with a large number of women who didn't know he was a police officer, and he therefore had sex with them without their informed consent. It happened in Britain and across Europe over several years and some of the women were friends of mine.

Jean said that if it is true that there are other officers working undercover in the protest movement, as Kennedy claimed, the police would have known about his sexual partners.

"There is a profound moral question here, and possibly legal questions as well," she added. "The question for senior police officers in the UK is simple: how much did they know and when did they know it?"

Kennedy also paid for several campaigners to travel to Ireland in the spring of 2005 and then to Germany to discuss the upcoming G8 protests, according to another activist.

"As part of the popular education project he also took part in workshops and participated in an evening pub quiz that we put on as part of events," said the woman. "His role was the bingo caller."

According to a long term former friend Kennedy's last appearance as an activist was during an animal rights protest in Milan in September last year when he gave a climbing workshop for fellow protesters.

Mark Kennedy row escalates as German politician steps in

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/ja ... ver-police

Leftwinger Andrej Hunko accuses British undercover police officer of 'operating on border of illegality'

The international row over the unmasking of undercover police officer Mark Kennedy intensified today when a German politician accused him of "operating on the border of illegality".

Andrej Hunko, of the leftwing Linke party, said Kennedy worked as an agent provocateur among German anti-fascist groups.

He suggested that Kennedy, who visited Germany several times, may have been feeding information to the German police.

The move comes amid growing concern that Kennedy, unmasked after the trial of environmental protesters collapsed in Nottingham, was a central figure in the European protest movement, forging links with groups in several countries.

Hunko said: "Kennedy wanted to infiltrate anti-fascists, and [act] as an agent provocateur to instigate actions together with them. I suspect, then, that it wasn't Scotland Yard that focused his interest on the 'hot spots' of the German anti-fascist scene. I see proof instead of the opposite: that the German police were involved in the operation of this British agent."

Earlier this week, Hunko called on the Bundestag to reveal what the authorities knew about Kennedy's infiltration of German protest groups.

Today, he said: "The government has denied the opportunity to disclose information relating to my official question of the government. In view of the continually increasing evidence of illegal activities, I demand that the operations of Kennedy within Germany be illuminated."

Similar calls have been made in Ireland, where Kennedy spent some time between 2004 and 2006.

Hunko said he knew of at least one case in which Kennedy offered his "help" in Germany. He said: "To an activist living in Germany, Kennedy had offered that when there was a 'Nazi problem', that he could come with 'his friends' to take care of it. Kennedy then expected that the activist should give him hints."

Hunko also accused Kennedy of starting sexual relationships with activists and helping to organise the German end of the G8 and G20 protests.

The Guardian revealed on Monday how Kennedy had lived deep undercover at the heart of the environmental protest movement for seven years, travelling to 22 countries, gleaning information and playing a frontline role in high-profile confrontations.

Hunko's researcher, Matthias Monroy, said he had met Kennedy three times in Berlin over the past nine years. He said Kennedy had been active in Dissent!, an international network of local groups that came together to organise opposition to the G8 summit at Gleneagles, Perthshire, in July 2005.

Monroy said Kennedy appeared to have been scouting for information right up to his unmasking: "Last year, one or two months before his true identity was discovered, I know that he sent emails to organisers of other protests asking what the plans were for the G20 summit in France in 2011."

The claims echo findings from other activists, who say Kennedy travelled through Europe under his adopted identity as a "freelance climber". This week it emerged that he had been a regular visitor to Ireland, Iceland and Spain.

Tricked, betrayed, violated: did police spy use sex to win activists' trust?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2 ... al-tactics

Woman questions motives of PC Mark Kennedy's relationships while he spent seven years undercover in the protest community

PC Mark Kennedy's former friends have – understandably – been most reluctant to speak candidly about the aspect of his life that could prove most explosive.

Placed deep undercover for more than seven years in the protest community, where he was known as Mark Stone, the police spy built strong friendships, and left a trail of individuals feeling confused and betrayed.

Tonight, a woman came forward to add to accusations that Kennedy in his undercover role had sexual relationships with women in the protest movement. Her allegations raise important questions for his senior police handlers about his conduct while operating undercover.

Giving details about how Kennedy gained her trust and slept with her many times over the course of a year, Anna, 26, said she felt "violated" by the actions of the police officer.

She now questions whether the British police have allowed a string of undercover agents to use sex as a "tactic" to disrupt and glean information about environmental campaigns.

A foreign national who has been active in the environmental movement throughout Europe, Anna said she met Kennedy in 2005 when she was 21.

"As far as I knew, he was very well connected and very active. He was very keen to help out in any way he could with our campaign. We met in London, and obviously as he was very active in everything I was doing we ended up spending a lot of time together."

She said she developed a sexual relationship with the undercover police officer, and had sex with him more than 20 times during that period.

"This movement is a small clique, so it is not difficult to run into the same people in various different situations. I also met him at various protests, for example in Germany, Spain, Ireland, the Netherlands and Iceland."

She said that she spent time at his house in Nottingham but the relationship eventually "faded out". Now married, she is no longer connected with the protest movement.

Anna, who did not want to give her full name, said there were several other women within the protest movement who Kennedy slept with. "I knew he was seeing other people at the same time and there was never any type of romance involved."

The young mother came forward after reading the Guardian investigation into Kennedy and recognising his picture.

There have been unconfirmed reports that Kennedy, who is believed to have had a wife and children before going undercover, also had a long-term relationship with a woman in Nottingham.

Separately, a German MP, Andrej Hunko, has tabled questions in the national parliament calling for an inquiry into Kennedy, who he alleged "didn't only initiate long-term, meaningful friendships but also sexual relationships, clearly under false pretences".

Kennedy's spying operation, which spanned 22 countries, caused widespread controversy after his role in planning and even paying for the invasion of a power station in Nottingham led to the collapse of the trial on Monday.

The collapse of the trial has been referred to the Independent Police Complaints Commission, but the watchdog has yet to announce an inquiry into Kennedy's seven-year spell undercover.

The Met and the National Public Order Intelligence Unit – the agency that Kennedy was seconded to – have refused to discuss the matter.

Kennedy, 41, has expressed remorse over a controversial operation in which he was required to live among protesters, disrupting, organising and at times even paying for "direct action" protests.

He has apologised to the tight-knit group of people in Nottingham whom he called his friends, saying what he had done was "wrong". He said he hoped it would "never happen again".

It is not clear how much Kennedy's police handlers knew about his activities. However, strict protocol for undercover spies requires them to give detailed feedback about their activities and discuss moral obstacles as they emerge.

"Did the Met know that this was going on, or even encouraged it?" Anna asked. "If he was keeping it a secret from the police then that is different. But I think he had so many friends and relationships with people in the movement that I'm questioning whether this was a tactic – or part of his task – to become more trusted or respected within the scene."

While shocked, Anna said there had always been something that "did not add up" about Kennedy.

She said: "He always had money. He obviously had an income that he never really explained. He told me once that him and his brother made beds out of scaffolding – to sell – and that is how he made so much money. At the time it seemed like a bit of a strange thing to me."

She added: "He was a bit different from all of us. He ate meat, he had a pick-up truck, and just not very hippy in a way. Nevertheless people trusted him, and I think people in this movement are generally accepting and open to people being different.

"In retrospect it is obvious that he was on a mission to make relationships, and make links with people. He talked lots about the people he knew all over Europe."

Mark Kennedy knew of second undercover eco-activist

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2 ... coactivist

PC who infiltrated green movement is understood to have confirmed existence of a fellow police spy

The undercover police officer whose seven-year infiltration of the green protest movement has sparked widespread controversy is said to have named another eco-activist as a fellow police spy, the Guardian can reveal.

PC Mark Kennedy is understood to have confirmed the woman was a fellow police officer two months ago, when being confronted by friends over his true identity.

Although Kennedy later quit the Met, expressing misgivings over an audacious operation that saw him betray close personal friendships, his identification of a fellow undercover operative amounts to a serious breach of protocol and is likely to add to the mounting concern over what appears to have been a coordinated operation to disrupt a peaceful activists' campaign against climate change.

Kennedy's double life under the fake identity "Mark Stone" was exposed two months ago by activists who had become suspicious of his willingness to help plan and pay for a planned invasion of a power station near Nottingham.

An investigation by the Guardian revealed he used a fake passport to travel to 22 different countries, gleaning information about left-wing activists and relaying sensitive details back to his police handlers since around 2003.

Today six activists walked free from Nottingham Crown Court after questions over the undercover officer apparently led to the collapse of their trial. A lawyer for the activists, who were among 114 arrested for conspiring to occupy the Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station in 2009, said that had Kennedy's role not been exposed, the operation could have led to a serious miscarriage of justice.

It emerged the undercover officer, who quit his job with the Met after expressing regret over his actions, offered to help with the defence's case. Mike Schwarz, a solicitor from Bindmans, said Kennedy had "gone native" after becoming convinced of the need to combat climate change.

In parliament, Keith Vaz, the chairman of the Commons home affairs select committee, said he would write to the Met commissioner, Sir Paul Stephenson, after questions emerged over the accuracy of parliamentary testimony about the use of plain clothes officers at protests. Vaz said it had appeared the commissioner and one of his commanders, Bob Broadhurst, had failed to disclose "the full facts" about the infiltration of protests when giving parliamentary evidence in 2009. "During our inquiry into the G20 protests, [MPs] explicitly asked Sir Paul Stephenson and commander Bob Broadhurst about the deployment of undercover officers," said Vaz. "I am disappointed they appear not to have given us the full facts."

Labour MP David Winnick said the home secretary, Theresa May, should address the allegation that the Met officer strayed from being a passive spy, and worked instead as an agent provocateur.

In Berlin, a German MP revealed he had tabled parliamentary questions after discovering the Met officer operated undercover "in German territories". The member of the German parliament asked how Kennedy was allowed into the country and alleged he had "sexual relations" with other activists while undercover.

Kennedy, 41, attended dozens of protests across the UK and Europe, gaining the trust of environmental activists while claiming to be a "freelance climber".

Working as a "driver" during direct action protests, the undercover officer obtained sensitive details about protests, and earned the nickname "Flash" because of his generosity with money, after helping fellow activists hire vans and pay court fines. However, Kennedy's friends became suspicious and discovered paperwork proving he was a police officer. Confronted in October, Kennedy confessed and expressed remorse over his actions.

Kennedy was then asked about other individuals in the protest movement about whom activists had suspicions. One was a campaigner who lived in Leeds and was closely involved in planning a major protest intended to close down the Drax coal-fired power station in North Yorkshire. There were already suspicions over the woman, who was in her 30s, after she disappeared suddenly around 2008 claiming to have fallen in love with a man in Coventry. The woman has not been seen since.

The six friends present when Kennedy broke down and admitted he was a spy then asked him directly if the woman was also a police officer. "He [Kennedy] nodded and said: 'Yeah, but you know about that already," said Craig Logan, 37, who was present. Kennedy is then said to have indicated that there were several other police officers living undercover in the protest movement.

Logan said that while there was circumstantial evidence suggesting the woman was operating undercover, Kennedy's former friends were highly suspicious of all the information he revealed that night. "This man was an extraordinary liar," he said. "We cannot take anything he told us at face value."

Tom Brake, the Liberal Democrat MP behind much of the questioning, has revealed doubts over the accuracy of evidence given by a third senior police chief.

Sue Sim, the deputy chief constable of Northumbria Police, but also in charge of public order policing for ACPO, told the committee she did not expect undercover officers were deployed.

Brake pressed her again in correspondence when she replied that her statement to the committee was "completely unequivocal".

"My response was that under no circumstances do I consider it appropriate to deploy plain clothes police officers into a protest of demonstration scenario."

In a tape recording during which Kennedy is questioned by another activist, broadcast last night on Newsnight, he is asked about the police use of infiltrators. "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 and well – fuck," he said.

Calls for inquiry into conduct of undercover police officer

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2 ... lationship

Activist says she feels 'violated' by sexual relationship with man unmasked as undercover officer


Mark Kennedy is said to have had sexual relations with activists while under cover.

Scotland Yard was under pressure tonight to explain whether it had authorised an undercover officer to have sexual relationships with environmental activists after a woman came forward to say she felt violated following a close relationship with the man unmasked this week as a police spy.

The woman told the Guardian that Mark Kennedy, the Metropolitan police officer at the centre of a growing controversy over the infiltration of peaceful environmental protest groups, had relationships with several women and may have used sex as a tactic to glean intelligence.

"He had so many friends and relationships with people in the movement that I'm questioning whether this was a tactic – or part of his task – to become more trusted or respected within the scene," she said today. "In a general sense, there is the feeling that if somebody was being paid to have sex with me, that gives me a sense of having been violated."

Following questions in parliament over the Kennedy case, a member of the Met's watchdog called tonight for a review into the conduct and handling of the officer known to activists as "Mark Stone", who spent seven years living among individuals campaigning against climate change.

"There should be guidance so officers remain focused on what they are doing," said Cindy Butts, a member of the Metropolitan Police Authority.

"I don't think 'by any means necessary' should be the modus operandi [for undercover officers] at all. There should be a review. I expect questions on all aspects of this case, including these [sexual] allegations."

The woman who said she had had a sexual relationship with Kennedy wants to be known only by her first name, Anna. She said she had sex more than 20 times with the undercover officer about five years ago, including at his house in Nottingham, when she was aged just 21. They met at protests around Europe, and it seemed clear to her that Kennedy was "seeing other women" around the same time. "I'm not sure personally if I would be willing to take part in an inquiry that touched on our sexual relationship," she said. "If the Met knew that this was going on, then obviously they should reveal this. There should be an inquiry into whether this is legal."

Kennedy, who joined the police in about 1994, is known to have had a wife and children before going undercover. There have also been unconfirmed reports that Kennedy had a long-term relationship with a woman in Nottingham while posing as an activist.

Questions over the ethics of the Kennedy operation have already been raised in Germany, where the MP Andrej Hunko has tabled questions asking whether authorities authorised the undercover officer to have "sexual relationships" in the country.

A Guardian investigation revealed on Monday that Kennedy had used a fake passport to travel to 22 different countries while posing as a campaigner, earning the trust of activists and feeding back intelligence to his commanders.

Confronted in October about his real identity by friends, Kennedy confessed, and has since expressed remorse. He had quit the Met several months earlier. "I hate myself so much I betrayed so many people," he recently told an activist friend. "I don't want this ever to happen to anyone ever again. What's happened is really wrong."

In an apparent attempt to seek redemption, Kennedy offered to assist six campaigners who had been due to face trial this week for conspiring to invade a power station near Nottingham. The trial collapsed on Monday after allegations emerged of Kennedy having acted as an agent provocateur ahead of the demonstration.

No police force or oversight body has yet commented on Kennedy's case, and it is not known whether the Met or the National Public Order Intelligence Unit, a monitoring agency he had been seconded to, condoned or even knew about his sexual activity.

However, two of Britain's most senior police officers told parliament today that conduct of undercover police officers was supervised and subject to oversight. Responding to questions from the home affairs select committee, Peter Fahy, chief constable of Greater Manchester Police, said: "It is something that is very tightly controlled and it does play an enormous contribution in some very, very difficult investigations."

He added that Kennedy's case, in which the officer appeared to have "swapped sides", was unusual. "Because it is so well managed and tightly controlled and there is a lot of concern about the welfare of these officers this sort of thing we have had over the last couple of days is extremely, extremely rare."

Chris Sims, chief constable of West Midlands Police, said it was too early to comment on the details of the case, but added that in general it was crucial to ensure that the "line is not crossed between infiltration to gather intelligence and the agent provocateur role which is absolutely not part of the system".

Kennedy is living abroad. His unmasking has prompted consternation among protesters, especially since Kennedy told activists friends he was "not the only one – by a long shot".

Activists are known to now be suspicious about two individuals – a man and a woman – who mysteriously disappeared from their movement over the last decade.

Today Melissa Jacob, an activist giving a statement on behalf of climate campaigners, said: "This case gets more murky every day. Did PC Kennedy have sexual relations with Anna to obtain information for the British state? If so, then this looks like state-sponsored sex abuse.

"The Met really cannot stay silent on the role of undercover officers in policing protest. How many more PC Kennedys are there in our movement?"

Revealed: Second undercover police officer who posed as activist

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/jan/1 ... ce-officer

Spy spent four years living in Leeds and played a central role in planning a demonstration to shut down the Drax power station


The undercover police officer is from a force in the south-east.

The controversy over a police surveillance network embedded in the environmental protest movement has deepened dramatically after the Guardian identified a second undercover officer who spent years living a double life as an activist.

The woman's name has been known to a group of six activists since Mark Kennedy – the police infiltrator identified by the Guardian on Monday as having spent seven years inside the movement – claimed she was also a police officer when confronted by them about his own identity last October.

Senior police chiefs said they were concerned for the safety of the second spy, and a major operation involving several UK forces is now under way to identify other operatives whose safety may have been compromised by Kennedy.

The second spy spent four years living as an environmental activist in Leeds, gaining the trust of dozens of activists and playing a central role in planning a demonstration to shut down Drax power station in North Yorkshire.

Her deployment ended in 2008, when she told activist friends she was leaving town for personal reasons. The Guardian has established the identity of the officer, who is from a force in the south-east of England, but has decided, after representations from senior police officers, to refer to her only as Officer A, and to use pixellated pictures of her.

Meanwhile politicians across Europe demanded information about the activities of Kennedy, the first undercover operative identified, who was on Tuesday accused of having had several sexual relationships with activists while undercover. Senior police sources have described these relationships as "unacceptable".

His UK-based handlers have flown to the US in an attempt to find an agent now accepted to have "gone rogue".

Aside from questions over his conduct while undercover, Kennedy, a Metropolitan police officer, committed a serious breach of protocol when he told friends from the protest movement that Officer A was his colleague. A police chief with detailed knowledge of the deployments of undercover officers in the protest movement said Kennedy's breach of protocol could lead to the "relocation of a considerable number of people".

That included undercover officers currently involved in ongoing police investigations across the UK and their families. "This is serious stuff," the police chief said. "Lots of people are at risk – their lives are at risk."

Kennedy, who has expressed remorse over an operation he told friends was "wrong", now appears to have been a key player in a pan-European network of leftwing and environmental groups.

Using a fake passport, he travelled to more than 22 countries from his base in Nottingham. A parliamentarian in Germany said Kennedy had been "operating on the border of illegality" in the country, and demanded disclosure about the operation. Kennedy's activities in Iceland, Ireland and Italy are also coming under scrutiny.

Documents obtained by the Guardian also suggest that, after quitting the Met last March, Kennedy attempted to continue to use his adopted identity to infiltrate protest groups. In an indication he planned to turn his hand to corporate espionage, Kennedy, who is said to have had money problems, set up two companies. One is connected to an individual who previously worked at Global Open, a private security firm set up by a former special branch detective. The company specialises in keeping a "discreet watch" on protest groups.

Police chiefs discussed the unfolding crisis at a meeting of the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) yesterday, which has limited company status and to which Kennedy and Officer A were seconded.

It is now believed several undercover police officers have been living long-term in the environmental movement, feeding intelligence back to the National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU), an Acpo body that runs a nationwide intelligence database of political activists. After concerns were raised about the accountability of NPOIU, police chiefs came up with a plan to move the unit to Scotland Yard. Subject to agreement, the unit will be taken over by Met officers next month.

However, a major review will now be under way into the oversight of officers such as Kennedy. Explaining why he and Officer A had spent so long undercover, the police chief said: "It is simply because of the environment. If you are a deeply ideologically motivated person … then getting close to you to understand your thought processes – and some idea of what you're doing – takes a lot longer."

He added that Kennedy's numerous sexual relations with women would not have been officially sanctioned. "That is conduct that is not acceptable," he said.

Mark Kennedy: secret policeman's sideline as corporate spy

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2 ... porate-spy

Former undercover officer apparently also worked privately as a corporate spy using the same false identity


Mark Kennedy is a former director of Global Open, who appear to have access to well-sourced intelligence regarding plans to attack Kingsnorth power station.

The undercover police officer whose unmasking led to the collapse of a trial of six environmental protesters on Monday apparently also worked as a corporate spy, according to documents seen by the Guardian.

Details of how Mark Kennedy went from police officer to businessman reveal the extent to which shadowy corporate firms appear to have developed links with the police. It also reveals something about Kennedy himself: with an apparent view to making money out of his access, the undercover officer used cryptic names derived from a science fiction television series, Stargate.

From 2003 until around March last year, Kennedy lived in the midst of the protest movement with the fake identity Mark Stone. Remarkably, he appears to have used that same undercover identity – which according to him cost the taxpayer £1.75m – to venture into private practice.

It is not known why Mark John Kennedy – born in Camberwell, south London on 7 July 1969 – quit his police job. However, he was apparently affected by the controversial police operation to arrest 114 people in Nottingham in April 2009 before protest action at Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station. He later offered to give evidence for the defence in the trial.

Documents seen by the Guardian suggest Kennedy put careful thought into what he would do after leaving the police. In February 2010 – a month before resigning – he set up Tokra Limited, at an address in Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire.

The fanciful name could have derived from a science fiction television series, Stargate. Kennedy might well have seen parallels between his company's mission and the plot, which features the Tok'ra as an alien race symbiotically inhabiting human hosts. In their human guise, the Tok'ra fight a powerful, evil race who seek to control and destroy the planet.

Calling himself a logistics officer, Kennedy registered himself as sole director of the company. Intriguingly, the address he used is the work address of Heather Millgate, a solicitor specialising in personal injury, and a former director of Global Open, a private security firm.

Global Open was set up in 2001 by Rod Leeming, a former special branch officer. The company keeps a "discreet watch" on protest groups for clients including E.ON.

It first came to public attention in 2007 when it was implicated in the case of Paul Mercer, a friend of the then Conservative shadow defence minister, Julian Lewis, who was exposed by the Campaign Against the Arms Trade of spying for the arms firm BAE.

Until Leeming left the police in 2001, he admits he regularly infiltrated undercover operatives into protest groups in his role as head of the Animal Rights National index. But he insists Global Open does not infiltrate activist groups. He told the Guardian the company only advises firms on security. However, Global Open appears to have access to well-sourced intelligence.

A confidential document produced by Global Open for another company interested in plans to attack the E.ON-owned power station at Kingsnorth in Kent dismissed the idea there would be violence.

"The aim of the protests is to cause economic damage to ensure that the cost of building more coal-fired power plants becomes prohibitive," it stated. "There is no threat of violence to persons from any of the groups concerned, despite newspaper reports to the contrary."

Leeming told the Guardian the company had never employed Kennedy. He did, however, confirm that Tokra was set up for a "reason" but he could not say what it was – only that it was a confidential matter between Kennedy and Millgate. Today, Millgate declined to comment when asked why Tokra had been set up.

Leeming added that Millgate left Global Open last year on good terms because she wanted to set up her own business. A flurry of official paperwork followed.

In February last year, Millgate went from being a marketing manager to a director of Global Open. On 31 March, Tokra changed its address from Millgate's work address to one in Basingstoke.

Last spring, Kennedy set up a second firm – Black Star High Access Limited – in east London. That company name also appears to have been taken from a television science fiction programme: Black Star is the name of a spaceship in Babylon 5.

On 12 April, Kennedy applied for Tokra to be dissolved. Within a few days of that application, he resigned from the police. Tokra was finally dissolved on the 17 August. On 31 August, Millgate resigned as director of Global Open. Black Star High Access has not yet filed any records to reveal whether it is a viable, financial concern, but it is still active.

Another friend of Kennedy said the implication he went on to work for private security firms "fits perfectly" with his behaviour. Kennedy was becoming agitated and, unusually for someone who earned the nickname "Flash" for his impressive wealth, he started running out of money around the time he resigned.

"He asked to borrow money – and that was after we now know he resigned from the Met," the friend said.

But if Kennedy was seeking to use the fake identity provided by police to continue his life as a spy, there was one crucial obstacle: he would almost certainly have had to hand in his fake driving licence and passport, meaning he would need to travel abroad under his real name.

This explains why, after maintaining his cover for seven years, he made such an amateur error of allowing friends to find his real passport, bearing the name Kennedy. "Mark must have known he had a ticking timebomb in his pocket when he travelled abroad," the friend said.

His curious activities in Italy recently also point clearly to his having obtained a new employer. In September, Kennedy – a meat eater who had never previously shown an interest in animal rights campaigns – confounded friends by attending a gathering of interested activists in Milan.

Alex Long, a former member of the Wombles, an anti-capitalist group, received his last contact from Kennedy around this time, after sending him a text message to raise funds for the legal campaign for a fellow activist.

"The last time I spoke to Mark was in September 2010, a few weeks before he was outed," said Long. "I texted him to try to raise money for the legal costs of a friend who is facing jail. He just replied: 'I'm in Milan at an animal rights gathering – I'll donate €50'."

Lawyer Mike Schwarz's statement on Mark Kennedy and the Ratcliffe trial

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2 ... ate-change

A statement on undercover policeman Mark Kennedy by the lawyer for the 18 activists charged for planning to shut down the Ratcliffe coal power station

On Easter Monday 2009 over 400 police officers were involved in a raid at Iona school in Nottingham, which led to 114 arrests. I represented 113 of those arrested. The 114th we now know was PC Kennedy, an undercover police officer. Six of my clients were due to face a long trial starting today.

However, the prosecution told the defence on Friday 7th January 2011, just before the trial was due to begin, and almost 20 months after the investigation began, that 'Previously unavailable material that significantly undermines the prosecution's case came to light on Wednesday 5 January'. The discovery of this material came at the time when the prosecution were informed that we planned to pursue disclosure of the evidence relating to PC Kennedy with the judge. Unsurprisingly, they have declined to confirm whether the new material relates to PC Kennedy. In my opinion the two are obviously connected. The timing speaks for itself. These events also beg wider, serious questions.

Would this evidence have been uncovered had the defence not become aware of it through other avenues? And is it appropriate that access to, and decisions about, disclosure of key evidence should exclusively be in the hands of a prosecution whose primary function is to secure convictions?

Let me be clear about this. My clients were not guilty. They did not agree to join in any plan to occupy the power station. The evidence of PC Kennedy presumably confirmed this.

Yet that evidence, had it been kept secret, could have led to a miscarriage of justice. Serious questions must be asked relating to the policing of protest, from the use of undercover officers, to the use of expensive and legally questionable mass pre-emptive arrest of protesters, to extremely restrictive pre-charge bail condition, to the seemingly arbitrary nature by which the 114 initially arrested were reduced to the final 26 who were eventually charged.

The police need to answer some serious questions about their conduct relating to protesters.

Second police officer to infiltrate environmental activists unmasked

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2 ... r-unmasked

'Officer A', who played key role in climate camp, has been accused of betraying friends worried by her disappearance


Mark Kennedy and 'Officer A' reportedly encountered each other while planning the first Climate Camp, an attempt to close the Drax power station.

She lived in a house in the student quarter of Leeds, showed a keen interest in protest and had an anarchist poster of the Queen Mother with punk hair on her wall. But in fact, unbeknown to her friends, she was an undercover police officer.

Yesterday the woman's double-life began to unravel as she became the second police spy to have infiltrated the environmental protest movement to be unmasked by the Guardian.

Toinght senior police sources confirmed that the woman, who was active in the movement for four years, was in fact an officer from a police force in the south-east seconded to the National Public Order Intelligence Unit.

It is the same unit – belonging to the Association of Chief Police Officers – that PC Mark Kennedy, a Met officer, was seconded to before he quit the operation, telling friends that what he had done was "wrong".

It was Kennedy who – in a serious breach of protocol – named Officer A to friends as a fellow police officer three months ago.

At the request of intelligence officials, the Guardian has agreed to withhold identifying details about the woman, who is still a serving officer, and will refer to her only as "Officer A".

The woman disappeared from Leeds in early 2008, citing personal reasons. Although she had a leaving party with close friends, she has not been seen by them since. It is believed that she has since had a role in other police operations unrelated to the protest.

Last night a Leeds University lecturer Paul Chatterton, 37, a close friend of the woman, said she had "abused the trust" of activists and that her infiltration had been immoral. "She appeared in 2004 in Leeds and wanted to get involved in various protest movements in the city," he said. "She said, 'What are you guys doing? I'd like to get involved.'"

Chatterton was among a number of activists in the city who came to know the woman well, and now feel betrayed.

He said he saw Officer A around twice a week, and he regularly joined her in the pub or went running with her in the local park. "I considered her quite a close friend," he said.

In retrospect, however, he said he was suspicious about some aspects of her life, such as poster in her living room by the anarchist group Class War. "I always found it quite weird," he said. "It was almost like she wanted to prove herself by having political propaganda on her wall."

Sam Harris, 26, another friend, said people were now "gutted and upset".

Details of her operation will add to mounting concern over a national police operation to infiltrate a peaceful protest movement. On Monday, the Guardian revealed that PC Mark Kennedy had lived for seven years in the protest movement.

Officer A, in her undercover guise, first emerged in Leeds about six years ago, expressing an interest in green activism. Like Kennedy, she then spent years living a double-life as an environmental activist.

She left in 2008 after telling friends she had to leave urgently, for personal reasons, to live in another city.

Senior police sources confirmed tonight that the length of time these two officers – and perhaps more – lived undercover in the protest movement was highly unusual.

Other agents, such as those disrupting serious organised crime, spend considerably less time undercover, but an exception is made for those who need to gain the trust of environmental activists.

Crucially, the woman knew Kennedy, who some suspect of using sexual relationships with activists as a "tactic" to obtain information. According to people who knew both Kennedy and Officer A, they encountered each other during the planning for the first Climate Camp, the event that was used to attempt to close down the Drax coal-fired power station, in North Yorkshire in 2006 and is now an annual fixture.

"Mark and [Officer A] knew each other very well," said one activist. "They hung out. They were both involved in the first climate camp and both had roles driving people to the site at Drax. He was openly sleeping with people – [Officer A] must have known that."

Her role during the Drax operation was key. "She was a driver, did some reccies for actions and of course involved herself in the social aspect of the camp," said Kate Anderson, 29, another friend. "She was present at Drax and Heathrow climate camp actions, against Coryton oil refinery and various anti-capitalist gatherings and protests," she added.

Officer A remains well-remembered at the Common Place, a former pork pie factory in Leeds which has given space and resources to radical groups for six years.

She was one of a group who rented the redbrick premises in Wharf Street as a local contribution to preparations for protests against the Gleneagles G8 summit in 2005. Volunteers at the centre said that she had "certainly been at the core" of the group, and was also involved in the practical side of running a cafe at the centre and the day-to-day finances.

Officer A's credentials were not checked in at the Common Place, which has always been open-minded and welcoming. Apart from hosting groups acting for social change, environmental concern and autonomous movements, it runs English classes for asylum seekers, bike maintenance and repair workshops and social events. "If she was an undercover officer, I imagine she would have found us useful as a way of getting contacts more than anything else," said one of the volunteers, who preferred not to be named. "She was certainly very involved and made some close friendships."

Other activists remembered hearing that Officer A had been involved in a proposal to blockade Drax by hiring cars and locking them down on the only approach road. Although discussed, this plan was never carried out.

Officer A's abrupt disappearance in 2008 caused concern about her welfare rather than suspicion of her role. Workers at Common Place – many of whom have day jobs in the public sector – were reluctant to believe she was an undercover police officer. "People were worried, though, when they tried to find out where she might have gone, and discovered that addresses and people she had mentioned did not exist," said one volunteer.

Third undercover police spy unmasked as scale of network emerges

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/jan/1 ... py-cardiff

• 44-year-old infiltrated Cardiff anarchist group
  
• Former girlfriend tells of 'colossal, colossal betrayal'

Protesters near Kingsnorth power station in 2008. Following revelations about Mark Kennedy, the Guardian has identified a third undercover police spy. Photograph: Daniel Berehulak/Getty Images

The unprecedented scale of undercover operations used by police to monitor Britain's political protest movements was laid bare last night after a third police spy was identified by the Guardian.

News of the existence of the 44-year-old male officer comes as regulators prepare two separate official inquiries into the activities of this hitherto secret police surveillance network.

The latest officer, whose identity has been withheld amid fears for his safety in other criminal operations, worked for four years undercover with an anarchist group in Cardiff.

Last night a former girlfriend and fellow activist said she felt "colossally betrayed" by "Officer B". The 29-year-old, who had a relationship with him for three months in the summer of 2008 while he was working undercover, said: "I was doing nothing wrong, I was not breaking the law at all. So for him to come along and lie to us and get that deep into our lives was a colossal, colossal betrayal."

The woman, who did not want to be named, said "Officer B" arrived in Cardiff in 2005, becoming a key member of the 20-strong Anarchist network in the city and "one of her best friends". They had known each for three years before their relationship and she said she did not suspect his true identity until after he left Cardiff in October 2009, claiming he had been offered a job as a gardener on Corfu.

According to the woman Officer B's flat was very empty, with no pictures of friends or family and he rarely talked about his past. "He always said he could not tell his family or friends about us because of the age difference ... if it had been anyone else I would have thought that was strange, but because [he] had been such a good friend for so long it really did not enter my mind that he was anything but a stand-up honest man."

Before he left for Corfu he held a goodbye dinner. His former girlfriend said she kept in touch with him for about a month via email, text message and the occasional postcard. Then the contact dried up.

"At first friends started messaging him asking if he was all right, then when there was no response, a few messaged him to say they were worried he was a spy, but we never heard anything."

The woman said that the experience had rocked her confidence and made her suspicious of other campaigners.

"I am incredibly, incredibly angry," she said. "Obviously to do that to anybody is pretty low, but to do that to someone who trusted you and cared about you and did their best to look after you is just unspeakable. I cannot imagine the kind of person who would lie to someone they were having a relationship with for that long and that seriously ... I strongly suspect that he felt very bad about what he was doing, but that is not an excuse."

The latest developments came as the Independent Police Complaints Commission announced it was widening its inquiry to include the controversy surrounding PC Mark Kennedy, who was the first officer unmasked by the Guardian and who also had sexual relations while undercover.

It is understood a second inquiry is to be launched by Her Majesty's Chief Inspectorate of Constabulary on Monday into whether the undercover surveillance was disproportionate.

Last night it was reported that the trial of six campaigners accused of trying to shutdown a power station at Ratcliffe-on-Soar collapsed because police had withheld secret recordings featuring Kennedy and the activists.

The Times said the Crown Prosecution Service abandoned the trial when it was informed that Nottinghamshire police had suppressed tapes that "fatally undermined the case against the protesters".

More details on the scale of Kennedy's key role in protest movements across Europe emerged yesterday, with allegations that he acted as an agent provocateur in Ireland, Germany and Iceland. It was also revealed that the second undercover agent – "Officer A" – was arrested for glueing herself to the Department for Transport during a protest against Heathrow's expansion in February 2008.

In a twist that will further unnerve senior police officers, it emerged that Kennedy has asked the public relations agent Max Clifford to sell his story.

Undercover police officer says he fears for his life

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2 ... l-collapse

Mark Kennedy says he has been 'hung out to dry' by former employers


Mark Kennedy spent seven years undercover among environmental activists.

The former policeman who spent seven years undercover among environmental activists has denied being an agent provocateur, saying that his superiors knew exactly what he was doing at all times and approved his activities.

Mark Kennedy, a Metropolitan police officer who infiltrated green and anarchist groups under the alias Mark Stone and fled to America after his cover was blown, said he fears for his safety following threats from activists. The 41-year-old said he believed that his former police superiors were looking for him too.

"I can't sleep. I have lost weight and am constantly on edge. I barricade the door with chairs at night. I am in genuine fear for my life," said Kennedy, who sold his story to the Mail on Sunday. "People like to think of things in terms of black and white. But the world of undercover policing is grey and murky. There is some bad stuff going on. Really bad stuff."

However, Kennedy said that throughout his time spent undercover he was in constant touch with police handlers and never tried to push fellow protesters into taking action: "I had a cover officer whom I spoke to numerous times a day. He was the first person I spoke to in the morning and the last person I spoke to at night. I didn't sneeze without a superior officer knowing about it. My BlackBerry had a tracking device. My cover officer joked that he knew when I went to the loo."

He said he felt he had been "hung out to dry" since being exposed.

Kennedy's activities were at the centre of the decision last week by prosecutors to abandon the trial of six activists accused of conspiring to break into Ratcliffe-on-Soar coal-fired power station in Nottinghamshire.

The former officer said that he made undercover audio recordings of the activists which threw doubt on prosecutors' claims they had conspired to commit aggravated trespass, but that his police superiors chose not to pass these on.

He said: "The truth of the matter is that the tapes clearly show that the six defendants who were due to go on trial had not joined any conspiracy. The tapes I made meant that the police couldn't prove their case. I have no idea why the police withheld these tapes."

The Independent Police Complaints Commission is to investigate the collapsed case. Twenty other environmental activists previously found guilty in connection with the same protest at Ratcliffe-on-Soar plan to challenge their convictions.

There have been calls for a wider investigation into the way police infiltrate such groups. Kennedy said that he knew personally of 15 other officers hidden within green groups during his time undercover from 2003 to 2009. He said: "Some got busted, others left. I was the longest-serving operative. At the time I left in 2009, there were at least four other operatives. I never did anything to jeopardise the work or lives of my fellow officers and I will not start now."

Kennedy, who separated from his wife in 2000, said his children, a girl aged 10 and a boy of 12, have been left devastated by recent events.

One of the most controversial aspects of his story is that he conducted at least two sexual relationships with fellow activists while living as Mark Stone. This, he conceded, should not have happened: "I am the first one to hold up my hands and say, yes, that was wrong. I crossed the line."

The relationships symbolised the impossible position in which he felt he had been placed, Kennedy added, admitting that the longer he spent with the activists the more he began to sympathise with their causes.

He said: "I fell deeply in love with the second woman. I was embedded into a group of people for nearly a decade. They became my friends. They supported me and they loved me. All I can do now is tell the truth. I don't think the police are the good guys and the activists are bad or vice versa. Both sides did good things and bad things. I am speaking out as I hope the police can learn from the mistakes they made."

"I was at the heart of a very sensitive operation. I was told my work was the benchmark for other undercover officers. My superior officer told me on more than one occasion, particularly during the G8 protests in Scotland in 2005, that information I was providing was going directly to Tony Blair's desk."

He continued: "As the years went on, I did get a sort of Stockholm syndrome. But I never lost sight of my work. I texted and informed on a daily basis. But I began to like the people I was with. I formed lasting friendships."

He criticised what he said was a lack of psychological support from his employers, saying he had considered killing himself in recent months: "I was supposed to get psychological counselling every three months. I would go two years without seeing the shrink. Initially meetings were regular. Then it became a farce. The office was so greedy for intelligence that they didn't set up the meetings. They went by the wayside. I'm sure that's the same for other undercover officers too." He said he resigned from the police last year.

Kennedy, who joined the City of London police aged 21 before moving to the Met, said that in 2006 he was beaten up by uniformed fellow police near Drax power station in North Yorkshire after trying to protect a female activist being struck with batons.

"I tried to stand between her and him. I didn't do anything aggressive. That's when I got jumped on by five officers who kicked and beat me. They had batons and pummelled my head. They punched me. One officer repeatedly stamped on my back."

Kennedy also told how he had created a credible identity when infiltrating groups, which included claiming a background in drug smuggling. He had formerly worked in the Met's drug squad.

He said: "I was an avid rock climber and I had been to Pakistan so I created a story about being involved in the importation of drugs. I knew the London drug scene well so I purported to be a courier. That is how I justified having money."

'I'm the victim of smears': Undercover policeman denies bedding a string of women during his eight years with eco-warriors

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... -life.html

• Unmasked as spy by beautiful Welsh redhead girlfriend
  
• Savagely beaten by five of his own police colleagues
  
• Intelligence he gathered sent directly to PM Tony Blair
  

The undercover policeman who posed as an eco-warrior for eight years came out of hiding to tell his full, extraordinary story – and reveal that he fears for his life.

Mark Kennedy, 41, denies ‘going native’ and triggering the collapse of the trial of six environmental activists accused of trying to shut down one of Britain’s biggest power stations.

He is also furious at what he calls a ‘smear campaign’ that he bedded a string of vulnerable women to extract information.

He said angrily: ‘I had two relationships while I was undercover, one of which was serious. I am the first one to hold up my hands and say, yes, that was wrong.'


Double identity: Mark Kennedy in his undercover days (left) and as he is now (right). He has received death threats from activists and sleeps in a barricaded room

He says it was to ‘do the exit strategy properly’ and offer a more credible explanation for why he was leaving the activist movement. He bought a canal boat, the Tamarisk, as ‘an affordable place to live’.

It has since been claimed that Kennedy used the boat to bed more women – a claim he strongly denies.

‘It’s my home,’ he says. ‘I am now having to read reports about how it was my shag pad. That’s simply not true.’

Describing a life lived ‘constantly on the edge’, he claims his former police bosses are searching for him in America, where he fled last year.

He has received death threats from activists and sleeps in a barricaded room.

‘I am in fear for my life and don’t know where to turn,’ he says. Mr Kennedy refutes suggestions that he crossed the line, became an agent provocateur and played a central role in organising the very protests police wanted him to sabotage.

‘My superiors knew where I was at all times – my BlackBerry was fitted with a tracking device – and they sanctioned every move I made. I didn’t sneeze without them knowing about it. I feel I’ve been hung out to dry.’

Speaking from a safe house, the former police officer tells how he led an astonishing double life as committed green anarchist Mark Stone before being ultimately let down by his handlers.

In an exclusive interview with The Mail on Sunday he reveals that:

• He was unmasked as a spy after his beautiful redhead girlfriend of five years found his real passport.
  
  
• Five policemen unaware of his undercover role savagely beat him up at a protest.
  
  
• Intelligence he gathered was passed directly to Tony Blair, then Prime Minister.
  
  
• Campaigners subjected him to a terrifying kangaroo court ordeal when his cover was blown.
  
  
• He was ‘incompetently’ handled by officers and was denied psychological counselling.
  

Mr Kennedy is estranged from his wife, with whom he has two children, a boy of 12 and a ten-year-old girl.

‘My son has been crying and says he never wants to see me again,’ he says.

The officer was recruited in 2002 by the Met’s National Public Order Intelligence Unit.

After his exposure last week, the secretive unit faced accusations that it ran ‘undemocratic’ operations. It has been urged to reveal the extent of its covert surveillance of peaceful protesters.

Mr Kennedy says he knows of at least 15 other officers who infiltrated the ranks of green campaigners in the past decade and of four who remain undercover.

He infiltrated and became a key member of the hardline group behind the alleged plot to shut down the Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station in Nottinghamshire in 2009.

When defence barristers submitted a disclosure request asking for information about his involvement, the prosecution apparently opted to abandon the case rather than have ‘murky’ evidence about the police’s involvement heard in public.

But Mr Kennedy says the case was doomed to fail anyway because covert recordings he supplied police proved undeniably that the six men facing trial last week for conspiracy to commit aggravated trespass were innocent.

Police withheld the recordings which, it was claimed yesterday, was the real reason the case collapsed.

Mr Kennedy’s case is now the subject of an investigation by the Independent Police Complaints Commission.

I've always respected the police. But the world of undercover policing is grey and murky. There is some bad stuff going on. Really bad stuff...
By CAROLINE GRAHAM

In an astonishing and revealing interview, Mark Kennedy today presents a very different image of the murky world of undercover policing to the one splashed across the media all week.

As Mark Stone, a long-haired drop-out mountaineer, nicknamed ‘Flash’ because of his access to ready cash, he attended scores of environmental protests in the UK and Europe.

But the man who sits before me is unrecognisable. His once lanky hair has been shorn into a neat short-back-and-sides. His grungy eco-warrior outfit of torn jeans and grubby T-shirt has been replaced by neatly pressed trousers, starched shirt and designer sweater. His full arm tattoos are covered by long sleeves. The only reminders of his former life are the piercings in his ears.


Hurt: Showing the injuries caused by uniformed officers at the 2006 Drax protest

He is on the run, he says, from both his former police bosses and from activists who have made death threats against him. But he has also been swamped with offers for book and movie rights to his life story.

Speaking for the first time about what he calls ‘my living nightmare’, he says:

‘I can’t sleep. I have lost weight and am constantly on edge. I barricade the door with chairs at night. I am in genuine fear for my life. I have been told that my former bosses from the force are out here in America looking for me. I have been told by activists to watch my back as people are out to get me.

‘I have chosen to speak out because I want my story out there. People like to think of things in terms of black and white. But the world of undercover policing is grey and murky. There is some bad stuff going on. Really bad stuff.’

He says he is ‘horrified’ by accusations that he ‘crossed the line’, goading activists into actions they would not normally have considered.

‘I had a cover officer whom I spoke to numerous times a day,’ he says.

‘He was the first person I spoke to in the morning and the last person I spoke to at night. I didn’t sneeze without a superior officer knowing about it. My BlackBerry had a tracking device. My cover officer joked that he knew when I went to the loo.’

He is also furious at what he calls a ‘smear campaign’ that he bedded a string of vulnerable women to extract information.

He said angrily: ‘I had two relationships while I was undercover, one of which was serious. I am the first one to hold up my hands and say, yes, that was wrong.

‘I crossed the line. I fell deeply in love with the second woman. I was embedded into a group of people for nearly a decade. They became my friends. They supported me and they loved me. All I can do now is tell the truth. I don’t think the police are the good guys and the activists are bad or vice versa. Both sides did good things and bad things. I am speaking out as I hope the police can learn from the mistakes they made.

‘I was at the heart of a very sensitive operation. I was told my work was the benchmark for other undercover officers. My superior officer told me on more than one occasion, particularly during the G8 protests in Scotland in 2005, that information I was providing was going directly to Tony Blair’s desk.’

He admits he has had ‘a total transformation’ since his undercover days.

‘I am physically and mentally exhausted,’ he says. ‘I have had some dark thoughts. I thought I could end this very quickly.

‘I went to see a psychiatrist recently and told her I was having thoughts of suicide. I don’t have any confidence. My world has been destroyed. I don’t have any friends, they were all in the activist movement.’

Kennedy was born and raised in Orpington, Kent, the eldest son of traffic police officer John and housewife Sheila. His younger brother Ian is a landscape artist in America.

He left school at 16, worked as a court usher and joined the City of London Police in 1990, aged 21.

‘I always respected the police,’ he says. ‘I’ve given my life to them. I never imagined I would end up in this situation.’

As he speaks, over a period of several hours, it is abundantly clear he is a police officer. He talks in a clipped, concise manner. He gives details in a monotone voice. He often uses ‘police-speak’ and acronyms.

In the early Nineties he was a uniformed member of the ‘Ring of Steel’ around the City of London. He transferred to the Metropolitan Police and in 1996 was recruited to his first undercover course on street-level drug dealing.

‘I was a natural at undercover work and I loved it,’ he says.

‘Drug work was black and white. You identify the bad guys, record and film the evidence, present it in court and take them down. I did that for four years and loved it.’


Birthday bash: Mark Kennedy/Mark Stone on stage at his '69ers party'

Kennedy married in 1994 and had two children, a boy, now aged 12, and a daughter, ten. His wife lives in Ireland and is a staunch Catholic and for that reason they have not divorced.

He says his children are ‘heartbroken’ by the current turn of events: ‘My son has been crying and says he never wants to see me again,’ he says sadly.

His marriage failed in 2000, around the same time as he was approached by the Animal Rights National Index, a unit which became the National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU), a shadowy body that runs a nationwide intelligence database of political activists.

The unit comes under the control of the Association of Chief Police Officers which, as The Mail on Sunday has previously reported, is a limited company that sells information from the Police National Computer, among other concerns.

Kennedy says his cover officer would report back up a line of command who ‘were aware of everything I was doing. Every action I took had to receive something called an “authority” which covered me to infiltrate activist groups and be involved in minor crime such as trespass and criminal damage. In all the time I worked undercover I never broke the law.’

Kennedy says: ‘The NPOIU is extremely specialised and intense. It is difficult work. To infiltrate a group like the activists is hard, even though they are sociable and friendly at the lower level. I had to create a whole life, a whole backstory, and maintain credibility for years.’

Kennedy says he knew of 15 other operatives doing the same work as him during his eight years undercover.

‘Some got busted, others left,’ he says. ‘I was the longest-serving operative. At the time I left in 2009, there were at least four other operatives. I never did anything to jeopardise the work or lives of my fellow officers and I will not start now.’

Kennedy created what is known in the trade as ‘a legend’ – a believable backstory.

‘I was an avid rock climber and I had been to Pakistan so I created a story about being involved in the importation of drugs,’ he says.

‘I knew the London drug scene well so I purported to be a courier. That is how I justified having money.

‘I said I’d led a bad life and wanted to make amends, which was why I was drawn to eco-activism. I was also a keen climber, so I often worked as an industrial climber, which meant I had a means of showing I was “making” money, rather than the truth – which was that the NPOIU would wire it to me.

‘I was given a fake passport as Mark Stone, a driver’s licence, bank accounts, a credit card and a phone with a tracking device.’

His £50,000 annual police salary was paid into a private account in his real name. All other payments, which he says came to £200,000 a year, went into his ‘Mark Stone’ account. He says since dropping his cover ‘I have found it hard to sign my own name on cheques again’.


Mark Kennedy says he knew of 15 other operatives doing the same work as him during the eight years undercover

He was sent to Nottingham to the Sumac Centre, a hub of activists: ‘I started slowly and made friends. Then I went to my first gathering of the Earth First group where I met an activist called Mark Barnsley.

'Our friendship blossomed and he treated me like a brother. He is a cantankerous figure but was well respected for his anarchist and vegan principles and the fact that he had fought with the PLO.

‘I was one of the few people who had a van, which made me a real asset. Things we take for granted in the real world are rare in the activist world. In those days very few of them had a mobile phone. Even now not many drive. That’s how the Flash nickname came about. I had stuff.’

Kennedy was involved in numerous activities, ranging from protests at the Drax power station in Yorkshire to picketing arms fairs in London and the Karahnjukar Dam in Iceland. His climbing skills were used to scale towers and buildings to unfurl banners. He drove hundreds of activists to demonstrations.

‘I began to live the life and enjoy it,’ he says frankly. ‘People have this image of hairy tree huggers and, yes, there is an element of that. I used to joke about them not just being vegans, but “freegans”. I was with people who would dive into skips to get food if it was free. But there are also a lot of educated, passionate people with degrees who really believe in what they are doing.’

I ask if the line between the activism and his police work ever became blurred: ‘As the years went on, I did get a sort of Stockholm Syndrome, (where kidnap victims fall for their abductors). But I never lost sight of my work. I texted and informed on a daily basis. But I began to like the people I was with. I formed lasting friendships.

‘I had no other friends. I was estranged from my wife. My life was undercover. Of course I cared about them. But I didn’t go rogue. I was immersing myself in the culture to do my job, to be credible.

‘I reported everything. There were many instances of shoplifting. I was offered counterfeit money. I was offered drugs many, many times. Yes, I had a serious relationship but there was another undercover female operative there who definitely knew about it.

'If anyone had asked, I would have told them. But no one asked. That is the problem about this whole undercover police operation. There seem to be no guidelines, no rules. I was pretty much left to fend for myself.

‘I got great information to keep police a step ahead of the game. I also prevented violence. At a G8 protest in Germany the riot cops were planning to go in heavy, but I knew the crowd was planning to disperse. I texted that information in, and the charge was called off. That stopped bloodshed.’

The low point of his career came in 2006 when he was beaten up by five uniformed police officers on the perimeter fence of the Drax power station – who were only there because he tipped them off.

‘A young petite woman I knew as Cathleen began to crawl through a hole in the fence,’ he says. ‘Then I saw a uniformed police officer start to strike her very hard on her legs and lower back with his baton.

‘I tried to stand between her and him. I didn’t do anything aggressive. That’s when I got jumped on by five officers who kicked and beat me. They had batons and pummelled my head. They punched me. One officer repeatedly stamped on my back.’

Kennedy went to hospital with a head wound, broken finger and a prolapsed disc. His attempt to claim for injuries incurred on duty was denied as it would blow his cover. ‘That p***ed me off,’ he says.

He says he was embraced by activists throughout Europe who he found ‘more militant and volatile’ than in Britain. In 2008 he was invited to a forest on the French-German border where groups from around Europe would share skills.

‘It was almost stereotypical. The Germans made very technical, clean and precise incendiary devices, the French were flamboyant and used Gauloises cigarettes to light the fuse and the Greeks were all for a big bang: they strapped a gas canister to a basic incendiary device.

‘When it was my turn I shared details of arm tubes – when protestors clip their arms into steel tubes to create a barrier. I think the others were a bit disappointed but British activism didn’t have the militancy or violence of other countries.’

Kennedy says he would travel abroad with fellow activists, and feed information back to his British superiors to share with other nations. ‘Activism has no borders,’ he says. ‘I would never go abroad without authority from my superiors and the local police.’

But Kennedy claims there were repeated cases of police mismanagement.

‘I was supposed to get psychological counselling every three months,’ he said.

‘I would go two years without seeing the shrink. Initially meetings were regular. Then it became a farce. The office was so greedy for intelligence that they didn’t set up the meetings. They went by the wayside. I’m sure that’s the same for other undercover officers too.’

He adds: ‘Plans were constantly changed at the last minute. It wore on my nerves. They just assumed I could change everything on the whim of the officer in control. It wasn’t that easy.

‘I became increasingly paranoid. I was stressed out. I was fried. I never stopped being a cop, but I was pushed to the limit of what I could endure.’

Kennedy says his cover was blown when a meeting planning action at the Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station in Nottinghamshire was raided in April 2009.

‘When it all kicked off, 114 people were arrested, including me. No further action was taken against most of them, but 27 people, including me, were to be charged with conspiracy offences. I kept being told by my cover officer, “Don’t worry, they are going to drop it,” but they never did.’

Meanwhile, Kennedy continued to work undercover, including the climate camp in London in the summer of 2009, but the Ratcliffe-on-Soar arrest was still hanging over him.

‘I was interviewed twice by detectives,’ he says. ‘The second time, I was the only one without a solicitor, which was hugely weird.

‘You can’t lie to a lawyer. So I couldn’t have a lawyer. I was a few days from being charged, then the case was dropped. That pretty much blew my cover.’

He says he was told his eight-year undercover operation was over in a curt text message in September 2009.

‘I’d just had a huge 40th birthday party for me and ten others born in 1969 called the 69ers party at a farm in Herefordshire. I was told, “At least you had a great party and now it’s over.” Then the text came telling me I had three weeks.

‘I had to clear out of the house where I was living in Nottingham. I was made to hand over my Mark Stone passport, driving licence and credit cards. I was then driven to Ireland.

‘I didn’t say goodbye properly. I’d told the activists I was feeling burned out and was going to visit my brother in America “indefinitely”. It was ridiculous, everyone knows you can’t just go to America like that.

‘I was given a mailing address in the US which was a PO Box. I had Facebook accounts and email accounts but wasn’t allowed to use those. I had lots of leave to take, which I spent with my children in Ireland.

‘I had an interview with the Met’s personnel department in December 2009 and was told I wasn’t qualified.

‘I was in there less than 20 minutes. I came out hugely depressed. I’d done 20 years’ service and they were basically telling me I was only qualified to drive a panda car. So long undercover had left me totally inequipped to go back into mainstream policing. I couldn’t even use the radios or computers.

‘Then in January last year I was approached by a private company which advises corporations about activist trends. It’s run by Rod Leeming, a former Special Branch officer. I’d never met him before.’

The company, Global Open, is based in London and has advised major corporations including E.On – which runs the Ratcliffe-on-Soar power plant – and BAE.

Kennedy handed in his resignation from the police in January, ending work in March.

He then went back to Nottingham and contacted his old friends: ‘People were worried about me. I wanted to withdraw myself in a more believable way. I didn’t tell police I was going back.’

He resumed his relationship with his girlfriend while he worked for Global Open as a consultant – although he says he did not operate undercover for the company.

‘I was using the time to try to extract myself in a proper way,’ he says.

‘I did a course on servicing wind turbines. I made the excuse that I was going to go off around the world doing that. That would have been a far more acceptable exit than just vanishing.’

In July he and his girlfriend went on holiday to Europe – when she discovered his passport in the name of Mark Kennedy. ‘She told the other activists about it and they started investigating me.

‘When I went to visit my kids in October I got a menacing phone call saying they knew I was a cop.

‘I knew then that it was over.’

‘My taped evidence was suppressed’
By CAROLINE GRAHAM

Tape recordings allegedly suppressed by the police would have destroyed the prosecution’s case against six activists accused of trying to shut down one of Britain’s biggest power stations, Mark Kennedy believes.

The Crown Prosecution Service said last week it was abandoning the £1 million prosecution against the environmental activists after fresh information had been made available.

It subsequently emerged that the Independent Police Complaints Commission is investigating allegations that Nottinghamshire Police failed to disclose all its evidence to the CPS including, it is claimed, several tape recordings.

Now Mr Kennedy has told The Mail on Sunday that he was the officer who made the recordings.
And he says the tapes throw considerable doubt on whether the activists accused of attempting to close Ratcliffe-on-Soar coal station, in Nottinghamshire, should have been charged with conspiracy to commit aggravated trespass.

Mr Kennedy said: ‘The truth of the matter is that the tapes clearly show that the six defendants who were due to go on trial had not joined any conspiracy.

‘The tapes I made meant that the police couldn’t prove their case. I have no idea why the police with held these tapes.’

On April 12 and 13 last year, Mr Kennedy says he attended two meetings, with 114 other protesters, at Iona School in Nottingham, to discuss shutting down the power plant.

Mr Kennedy said that before these meetings he was instructed to wear a recording device, the first time he had been ordered to do so by his handlers. Twenty activists were subsequently arrested at the school and found guilty of conspiracy to commit aggravated trespass at a trial in December.

Six others were to go on trial this week on the same charges, until the case was dropped.

However Mr Kennedy believes that his recordings prove that the activists should not have been charged.

The charge of conspiracy to commit aggravated trespass, according to a senior barrister, requires an agreement among all those charged with the conspiracy to break in to the coal station.
Criminal barrister Michael Wolkind QC said: ‘It is straightforward. There has to be evidence of agreement.’

But Mr Kennedy, who subsequently flirted with providing assistance to the activists’ defence team, said there was no agreement and his recordings prove it.

‘The meetings were over two days and I recorded both days. The first recording didn’t record because the office had failed to charge the battery on the device.

‘The second day, the battery was charged and I recorded Spencer Cook, one of the defendants who was convicted in the first trial last December, holding a briefing in front of 114 people detailing what the action was about.

‘It was to shut down the power station in a safe way.

‘During that briefing Spencer was very clear that this was a volunteer-only operation and it was down to the individual to decide what role they wanted to play. There was no pressure on anybody to take part in anything they didn’t want to do.

‘I just assumed that the police would naturally put my tapes into evidence. Clearly I was wrong.’

Mike Schwarz, the lawyer representing the activists involved, said Mr Kennedy’s evidence cast doubt on the legality of the whole police operation.

He said: ‘What Kennedy says now and what he confirmed to his handlers at the time casts serious doubt on the safety of the conviction of the 20 activists and the compliance of the police with their legal obligations.’

Under the Criminal Procedure and Investigations Act of 1996, the police have a duty to make the CPS and the defence team aware of evidence they have collected.

Mr Kennedy’s identity could have been protected by the judge granting a Public Interest Immunity order should the tapes have been heard in court.

Nottinghamshire Police declined to comment tonight.

Mark Kennedy and the impenetrable world of police moles

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2 ... cret-moles

The case of undercover agent Mark Kennedy has raised vital questions about accountability


PC Mark Kennedy in his undercover role as an environmental activist.

On a little-known police database there are 1,822 mugshots of individuals. The photographs are held by the National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU), and few outside the organisation know who these people are.

The unit is part of a nexus of policing organisations that last Monday came to attention when a trial of six environmental campaigners collapsed after an undercover police officer who had infiltrated the group offered to give evidence on its behalf.

PC Mark Kennedy, 41, worked for the NPOIU and for seven years led a double life as a spy within the green movement. For those who have studied the methods of his secretive unit, the case was perturbing on many levels, but not surprising. Protesters deemed to be "of interest" are photographed and the images are disseminated among forces, while Kennedy's emergence underlines its use of "covert human intelligence sources".

Although precise details of his brief are unknown, allegations that Kennedy served as an agent provocateur raise damaging questions over policing ethics and strategy, along with concerns over the safety of several previous convictions.

The unit was launched in 1998 to monitor animal rights extremists. Yet Kennedy's role – he infiltrated the green movement in 2000 – suggests that senior police officers quickly began to view eco-activists as elements threatening state security.

The NPOIU has access to various police databases, including that run by Scotland Yard's public order unit (CO11), which in turn oversees the forward intelligence teams that attend demonstrations to look out for known "faces" and "domestic extremists". Intelligence gathered by the unit is also passed to the National Extremism Tactical Co-ordination Unit (NETCU), which admits looking after the interests of "industry, academia and other organisations" targeted by activists. Campaigners believe that it is more concerned with protecting corporate interests than civil rights.

Both units are linked to the National Domestic Extremism Team (NDET), which oversees investigations into alleged offences by political activists. In turn, the three teams are headed by the national co-ordinator for domestic extremism, Detective Chief Superintendent Adrian Tudway. The final element is the terrorism and allied matters (TAM) committee of the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo), which includes counter-terrorism units, the security services and senior Home Office officials.

Secrecy abounds, and Kennedy had several sexual liaisons while working undercover. Crucially, it is not known whether these were sanctioned, disapproved of, or authorised. Some critics claim that Kennedy appeared to be operating out of control, liberated from the confines of public scrutiny. Yet senior Acpo sources insist the use of undercover officers is highly regulated, with all operations overseen by the surveillance commissioner.

The NPOIU is deemed so discreet that police will not even confirm the location of its base or the identity of its head, although sources say it can be found within Scotland Yard. Yet it is not part of the Met. In fact, Kennedy's handlers are wholly unaccountable. Acpo, the lead body on domestic extremism, is a private company, incorporated in 1997. It is subcontracted by Whitehall to operate the policing responsibilities of the government's "anti-extremism" strategy and can, for instance, ignore freedom of information requests.

Unaccountable it may be, but the cost to the taxpayer is significant. Running Kennedy – let alone his colleagues – cost the public purse £1.75m over seven years. The budget of the NPOIU has more than doubled to £5.7m in four years.

Kennedy's role already, say some, suggests the culture of paranoia within government is at a very high level. This is unlikely to change. The question is, how many Kennedys are out there? And to what purpose? Activist groups everywhere are expecting key members to start disappearing in the months ahead.

Mark Kennedy 'took part in attack on Irish police officers at EU summit'

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2 ... intcmp=239

Undercover police officer was involved in violent protest and helped train other demonstrators, anarchists claim

The undercover policeman Mark Kennedy was in the vanguard of militant anti-capitalist protesters who attacked Irish police officers at an EU summit in Dublin marking the accession of eastern European states to the union, Irish anarchists have told the Guardian.

Protesters who took part in actions with him allege that his involvement went further than just observing. They allege that he also made visits to Dublin to help train protesters and encouraged other activists to attack the police. This raises further questions about his role as an undercover officer and backs up suggestions he acted as an agent provocateur.

The latest revelations have prompted one leftwing member of the Irish parliament to brand the UK police's secret operation akin to the illegal activities of British state agents operating on the island during the Northern Ireland Troubles.

Michael D Higgins of the Irish Labour party is demanding that the Irish government seek an explanation from Britain as to why one of its undercover policemen was operating in the republic.

"This kind of activity is totally unacceptable … There are many of us who are familiar with the destructive consequences, in terms of democracy, that have flowed from this kind of activity from the 1970s on in relation to Northern Ireland," the veteran Labour TD said.

Anti-capitalist activists operated with Kennedy, while they believed him to be a fellow protester called Mark Stone, during violent clashes between a small band of demonstrators and the Garda Siochána's riot squad on May Day 2004.

At the time the area around Dublin's Phoenix Park – the largest park in any European city – was sealed off by a huge security cordon as police sought to protect the heads of EU states who were in Dublin for the ceremony at the Irish president's residence.

One Northern Ireland-born anarchist, who asked not to be identified, said Kennedy had stayed with him in Dublin in the days before the demonstration.

Although the vast bulk of the demonstrators were peaceful, about 500 attacked the gardaí. The focal point for the violence was the gates leading to the Phoenix Park on the Navan road. At one stage the garda deployed water cannon to drive back a spearhead of masked demonstrators.

One of those taking part in the protest recalls being astonished by Kennedy's action on the day. "I saw him taking off his balaclava as he was coming out of the crowd. I was amazed that someone would stand close to police lines and take his mask off."

Before the protest it was clear the police had intelligence on the activities of some anti-capitalist activists who had travelled across the Irish Sea from Britain, suggesting that they had an informant in the protest movement. A unit from the garda's Pearse Street station smashed its way into a flat on Leeson Street in Dublin occupied by English anarchists and arrested several people.

The Irish anarchist who played host to Kennedy said that in the build-up to May Day 2004 the Englishman was in a militant mood. "Some people arrested from the UK were kept here for two months but he did not get nicked for that. He was one of the people who were encouraging a confrontation with the garda up at the Parkgate," the activist said.

He said Kennedy made at least two other visits to Ireland over the next two years. These included acting as a trainer on a programme for anarchist activists later in 2004 on civil disobedience. Two years later he joined the mass demonstration against the visit of George Bush to Ireland.

"I found him very personable, very affable. I never suspected him. Growing up in the north of Ireland you know there are people out there who are informers but I never had any strong doubts about him," said the anarchist.

Mark Kennedy 'played key role in forming green movement in Iceland'

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2 ... intcmp=239

Undercover police officer made himself indispensable to movement, activist claims

Iceland's environment movement had barely established itself when Mark Kennedy appeared on the scene in 2005.

Campaigners had the determination to fight environmental threats but little experience of effective protest – so Kennedy's help and knowledge was welcome.

But his activities – under the pseudonym Mark Stone – are coming under scrutiny in Iceland after his unmasking as an undercover police officer by the Guardian. Green activists describe him as a key figure in creating the Iceland movement.

On Monday, Ogmundur Jonasson, the interior minister who is also in charge of the police, will begin an investigation into where exactly there was collaboration between the Icelandic government and the British authorities regarding Kennedy's presence.

Birgitta Jónsdóttir, an MP for the Movement party, has called Kennedy's activities "a complete mockery of democracy" and challenged the UK police to hand over details of his operation in Iceland.

Jónsdóttir said: "It is unacceptable to pre-persecute people and try to make them guilty by initiating a course of action that might not have occurred to them without the agent's influence.

"I challenge the British authorities to hand over the information to clarify how they came to send an agent to this country to try to destroy an environmental movement which is trying to raise public awareness in a perfectly democratic manner."

Back in 2005, Olafur Pall Sigurdsson, founding father of Saving Iceland, the country's first direct action network, set out across Europe in search of expertise to build an effective green movement.

His ''international SOS'' tour was a success. Sigurdsson raised international awareness of Iceland's problems, forged links and met Kennedy.

The undercover policeman played his part to perfection. When Sigurdsson introduced him to Iceland in early 2005, members of the embryonic network were delighted: not only did Kennedy have an enviable list of contacts and friends in activist groups across Europe, but he was keen to share everything he knew about campaigning and protesting.

"Mark was instrumental in forming activism in Iceland," said one activist who knew Kennedy for many years. "He made himself indispensable. He was one of the key people in the early years. He helped nurture what was an embryonic movement and helped it evolve. He played a big role in furthering the movement.

"When he went to Iceland, Saving Iceland was very young. Mark was very willing to encourage people to participate, and to share techniques and tactics that had been very effective in the UK."

Saving Iceland sprang into life to protest against the building of the Kárahnjúkar dam in the island's east. Kennedy quickly became a vocal and key decision-maker.

But although the campaign – the first direct action protests the island had experienced — were big news, Kennedy thought the network could go further.

At public meetings Kennedy was often on an "adrenalin rush". The activist said: "He was very keen to play a very decisive and key role in all aspects of organisation and participation. He was always more likely than the average member of the group to suggest radical actions that could be perceived as aggressive by the mainstream media and the police."

It was during this campaign that Kennedy showed the Icelandic activists the techniques of ''lock down'' – when protesters attach themselves to an immobile object – and how to block roads by constructing tripods from scaffolding, placing a protester at the apex.

But the Guardian has seen private emails suggesting Kennedy was at the same time trying to drive a wedge between the group's members. In one email, he suggested a prominent member of Saving Iceland had become a liability.

"[A prominent member of Saving Iceland] was once again annoying," he emailed. "I was left with a feeling that the tour group was fragmenting …[he] seems extremely tired and I think he does not cope well with the way that groups like ours like to do things. Despite our best efforts he will not let go of the reins."

Although Saving Iceland declined to be interviewed it disputes the level of Kennedy's involvement.

Undercover police officer 'could be prosecuted in Germany'

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2 ... intcmp=239

Green party MP calls for government to reveal whether Mark Kennedy committed criminal offences in Germany


Questions have been filed with the German parliament about the activities of undercover police officer Mark Kennedy. Photograph: Murdo Macleod for the Guardian

The row over the deployment of Mark Kennedy deepened today as another German politician entered the fray to suggest the undercover police officer could be prosecuted in Germany.

Hans-Christian Ströbele, a Green party MP, has tabled a question for the German government demanding to know whether Kennedy committed any crimes in Germany or incited others to do so. If it is proven he did, he must be brought to justice, said the politician.

Ströbele said today: "We are demanding the German government reveal what this agent, this British agent, was investigating for the British authorities in Germany – and also what he was working on for the German authorities. We are urgently demanding information on whether he had ever committed any violent acts, or provoked anyone else to behave violently, and whether he ever committed any criminal offences.

"If it turns out to be true that he committed crimes, charges should be brought against him and he should be put on trial."

Not just Kennedy but also his superiors should be prosecuted if there was evidence of criminality, he added.

Ströbele said Kennedy was also at risk of civil actions brought by German-based activists. Women who feel he tricked them into bed could potentially demand damages, as well as others who think Kennedy hurt them physically or emotionally, said the politician.

So far two of Ströbele's constituents who knew Kennedy have written to him asking for information on Kennedy's deployment in Germany.

Another question was filed with the German parliament today by Andrej Hunko, MP for the leftwing Linke party, suggesting activists convicted in Germany over the past seven years had a right to know whether Kennedy had been involved in their prosecution.

Jason Kirkpatrick, a Berlin-based filmmaker who knew Kennedy, said the undercover officer often visited Berlin over the past six years, and was a regular visitor to a tattoo parlour called Für Immer in the eastern district of Friedrichshain.

But what unsettles Kirkpatrick and other German-based activists is the suspicion that the German authorities sanctioned Kennedy's work in Germany. This inkling came around a year ago, when Kennedy apparently started to show a sudden interest in the anti-fascist movement.

"One day late 2009, early 2010, Mark asked me out of the blue if I knew any places in Germany with Nazi issues. He said he had a 'crew' in England who could come and sort them out," claims Kirkpatrick. "I was shocked to hear him talk of violence like that."

Kirkpatrick reasons that the British police authorities can have had no legitimate interest in German anti-fascists, and believes Kennedy was therefore also under the instruction of the German authorities.

But when Hunko asked a series of questions about Kennedy's German deployment just before Christmas, the German government refused to respond for "operational" reasons.

Under German law, both Ströbele's and Hunko's new questions must be answered by next Wednesday. If the German government refuses to answer them, Ströbele says he will appeal to the highest German court, the Bundesverfassungsgericht, the federal constitutional court.

He is also lodging demands with the Geheimdienst-Kontrollgremium, a body set up to investigate complaints about the German secret service.

Police climate spies can't break us

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... intcmp=239

Planting police spies among green activists was an attempt to derail a growing social movement – and it has failed

Kate Anderson

I knew Officer A well – or rather, I thought I knew her well – and I had met Mark Kennedy on many occasions. On a personal level I feel real sadness about the loss of someone I considered a friend. On a political level this raises some questions of real concern to everyone.

In a combined 11 years of undercover operations, the evidence gathered by these officers led to not one arrest or conviction. In fact, the operation had the opposite effect, causing the collapse of one trial relating to the activist protest at the Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station in October 2009. Undercover operations are normally aimed at securing evidence for trial and arrest, but these operations were not so much about the transgression of laws but more an attempt to disrupt and demoralise a nascent and growing social movement.

The other justification for the use of undercover officers is to protect the public. The police often use the politics of fear to justify their behaviour and no doubt protect budgets. Hugh Orde was in full fear mode on Newsnight, pushing the idea that the Ratcliffe action would have shut down the national grid and deprived hospitals of electricity. He must know that the grid can deal with big outages and that even if it failed all hospitals have back up systems. It is Eon that would have suffered, not the public. Climate camp actions, such as the Drax train blockade, were typically aimed at highly profitable corporations, and tried to avoid confrontation with the public. It's fair to say, then, that this is a move beyond political policing. We are now seeing a publicly funded police force used as a national private security service for large corporations.

The effectiveness of these officers is also questionable. Not only did they fail to secure any convictions, they failed to significantly undermine the movement. A commitment to decentralisation and challenging hierarchy has made the grassroots climate movement resistant to infiltration. A decapitation strategy doesn't really work on a movement that's all heads. In addition, a politics that sought to engage people in mass open actions meant secrets couldn't be exposed because often there were none.

In the end, the very thing that these officers abused – our capacity for friendship, trust, and community – made us resilient. Like a cell dividing for every action that failed, people would regroup and try again. And despite our radical politics, many where willing to join with other more mainstream groups in tactical alliances that helped gain political leverage. Without the efforts of our movement, it is likely that both a third Heathrow runway and a series of new coal-fired power stations would now have had the go-ahead.

This controversy also exposes Westminster elites who profess to care about civil liberties and the environment but are cowed when real events call for action. Where are the calls for a judicial inquiry? Where is the parliamentary inquiry? The deafening silence of supposedly centre-left politicians in both the Labour party and the Lib Dems exposes two parties that want the support of liberals but have nothing to offer them, even after a vast police operation is exposed as having used illegitimate tactics to silence the environmental movement.

Peitepoliisi 8 vuoden kaksoiselämästään: Seksiä, valheita ja tappouhkauksia!

http://www.iltasanomat.fi/ulkomaat/Peit ... 59777.html

Ekoaktivistien järjestöön soluttautunut brittipoliisi eli kahdeksan vuotta täydellistä kaksoiselämää.

Mark Kennedyn tapaus on herättänyt Britanniassa vilkkaan keskustelun poliisin peitetoiminnan pimeästä puolesta. Uhreiksi on jo nimetty Kennedy itse, hänen vaimonsa sekä sumutetut ympäristöaktivistit - etenkin ne naiset, joiden mukaan valeaktivisti käytti heitä seksuaalisesti hyväkseen.

Mark Kennedy avautui sunnuntaina Daily Mail -lehdessä, jossa kuvailee elämäänsä painajaiseksi. Mies kertoo pakoilevansa nyt sekä poliisia että ympäristöaktivisteja, joilta on saanut tappouhkauksia. Samaan aikaan hänelle tarjotaan kirja- ja elokuvasopimuksia.

- En pysty nukkumaan. Olen laihtunut ja jatkuvasti kuilun partaalla. Telkeän oveni tuoleilla öisin. Pelkään henkeni puolesta, Kennedy kertoi brittilehdelle salaisesta paikasta Yhdysvalloista.

Radikaaliin ympäristöliikkeeseen soluttautunut poliisi esittäytyi aktivistitovereilleen nimellä Mark Stone. Pitkätukkainen ja tatuoitu vuorikiipeilijä tunnettiin myös lempinimellä Flash, koska oli pakettiautoineen ja rahoineen aina valmis suoraan toimintaan.

Tuoreista lehtikuvista miestä ei tunnista samaksi. Hiukset ovat lyhyet ja repaleiset farkut sekä kauhtuneet t-paidat ovat vaihtuneet jälleen samettihousuihin ja kauluspaitaan.

- Minun täytyi luoda kokonaan uusi elämä taustatarinoineen ja ylläpitää uskottavuutta vuosia, Kennedy kertoo Daily Mailissä.

Pakistanissa oikeastikin vuorikiipeillyt perheenisä valehteli aktivisteille osallistuneensa huumeiden maahantuontiin, mikä selitti hänen käytössään olleet rahasummat.

Virkansa puolesta hän sai passin, ajokortin ja pankkitilin Mark Stone -nimellä sekä kännykän jäljityslaitteineen. Lopetettuaan peitehommat hänellä oli vaikeuksia kirjoittaa oikea nimensä virallisiin papereihin.

Kennedyn epäillään ylittäneen rajan ja yllyttäneen ympäristöaktivisteja laittomaan toimintaan. Mies sanoo olevansa kauhuissaan syytöksistä. Hän kertoo nuuskineensa ylemmän poliisijohdon siunauksella ja raportoineensa päivittäin yhteyshenkilölleen.

- BlackBerryni (kännykkä) oli jäljityslaite. Yhteyspoliisini nauroi tietävänsä jopa sen, milloin käyn vessassa.

Useat aktivistinaiset puolestaan väittävät, että Kennedy hankkiutui heidän kanssaan seksisuhteeseen urkkiakseen tietoa. Kennedy kuittaa väitteet osaksi mustamaalauskampanjaa.

- Minulla oli soluttautumisaikanani kaksi suhdetta, joista toinen oli vakava. Nostan ensimmäisenä käteni ylös ja tunnustan, että ylitin rajan. Rakastuin syvästi toiseen naiseen. Olin sidoksissa ryhmään melkein vuosikymmenen. Heistä tuli ystäviäni. He tukivat ja rakastivat minua, Kennedy sanoo brittilehdessä.

- Irtosuhteet olivat yleisiä siinä ympäristössä. Minulle tarjottiin seksiä toistuvasti. Enkä ollut ainoa soluttautuja, jolla oli suhteita, hän puolustautuu.

Todellinen rakkaus "walesilaiseen punapäähän" roihahti, kun pari vastusti vesisähkövoimalaa Islannin kauniissa erämaassa. Kennedy kertoo pelastaneensa maansiirtoautoon itsensä kahlinneen aktivistinaisen hengen pysäyttämällä auton ja rikkomalla sen akun.

Kennedy oli mukana monissa mielenosoituksissa Britanniassa ja muualla Euroopassa. Miehen mukaan hänen G8-mielenosoituksesta Skotlannista 2005 onkimansa tieto välitettiin pääministeri Tony Blairille asti. Hän myös uskoo estäneensä verilöylyn Saksan G8-kokouksessa ilmoittamalla tekstiviesteillä mielenosoittajien aikeista poliisille.

Kennedy myöntää sairastuneensa niin sanottuun Tukholman syndroomaan. Hän meni mukaan aktivistien elämään, josta alkoi nauttia. Hän kuitenkin kiistää jyrkästi rikkoneensa lakia.

Poliisi veti Kennedyn peitetehtävästään syksyllä 2009. Poliisi paljasti aktivistien suunnitelmat vallata Britannian suurimpiin kuuluva hiilivoimala. Yli sata aktivistia pidätettiin ja 27:ää syytettiin salajuonen valmistelusta.

Kennedy oli loukussa ja pelkäsi henkilöllisyytensä paljastuvan. Hän pakeni Amerikkaan. Aktivistiystävilleen mies sepitti kärsivänsä burnoutista ja muuttavansa veljensä luokse toipumaan.

Kennedy sai pian töitä yksityiseltä Open Global -firmalta, joka konsultoi suuryrityksiä aktivistien toiminnasta. Kennedy irtisanoutui poliisista, palasi Britanniaan ja aloitti uudelleen suhteensa walesilaiseen punapäähän. Mark Stonen henkilöpapereista hän joutui luopumaan.

Viime heinäkuussa automatkalla Euroopassa aktivistityttöystävä etsi hansikaslokerosta aurinkolasejaan, kun löysi Kennedyn oikean passin. Oli sattumalta Kennedyn 41-vuotissyntymäpäivä.

- Se oli painajainen. Olin tuntenut hänet viisi vuotta. Hän tunsi minut vain nimillä Mark Stone ja Flash, Kennedy muistelee Daily Mail -lehdessä.

Kennedy jatkoi valehtelua. Hän väitti omistavansa useita passeja huumekauppiasmenneisyytensä takia. Myöhemmin selvisi, että tyttöystävä oli kertonut epäilyistään muille aktivisteille.

- Lokakuussa sain uhkaavan puhelun, jossa kerrottiin heidän tietävän, että olen poliisi. Tiesin silloin kaiken olevan ohi.

Kennedy katuu syvästi valehteluaan. Kaksoiselämä oli hänelle niin raskasta, että hän alkoi tulla vainoharhaiseksi ja hautoi itsemurhaa.

- Maailmani on tuhoutunut. Minulla ei ole yhtään ystävää. He kaikki ovat ympäristöliikkeessä.

Kennedy kertoo tietävänsä 15 muuta agenttia, jotka tekivät hänen kanssaan samaan aikaan myyrän työtään ympäristöliikkeessä. Kennedyn epäillään paljastaneen naiskollegansa henkilöllisyyden aktivistiystävilleen, minkä hän itse kiistää.

Hänen mukaansa poliisin peitetoiminta on vaarallista peliä, sillä tarkkoja sääntöjä ei ole.

- Minut jätettiin pitkälti vastaamaan itse itsestäni, katkera Kennedy sanoo.

- Poliisin peitetoimintamaailma on harmaa ja synkkä. Pahoja asioita on menossa. Todella pahoja.

Vuonna 1994 avioituneella Kennedyllä on 12-vuotias poika ja 10-vuotias tytär. Daily Mailin mukaan hänen Irlannissa asuva vaimonsa on harras katolinen, minkä takia pari ei ole hakenut avioeroa. Toisten lehtitietojen mukaan myös Kennedyn vaimo tuntee itsensä nyt petetyksi ja haluaa erota.

Mari Markkanen, Lontoo

Another UK Snitch - Mark "Marco" Jacobs

http://snitchwire.blogspot.com/2011/01/ ... acobs.html

from UK Indymedia:



A third undercover police officer has today been revealed by the Guardian. Mark Jacobs, known as 'Marco', operated in Cardiff for four years, infiltrating the Cardiff Anarchist Network (CAN) and other groups including international anti-globalisation networks, No Borders, and the early Climate Camps.

His former girlfriend is reported as saying "I was doing nothing wrong, I was not breaking the law at all. So for him to come along and lie to us and get that deep into our lives was a colossal, colossal betrayal."

Other activists have claimed that as well as disrupting activities and gathering information, he created and nurtured disagreement and division within the group, turning members of the group against each other.

Simon Brenner - German Snitch in Antifa Scene

http://snitchwire.blogspot.com/2011/01/ ... ntifa.html

from Athens Indymedia:



German undercover agent also at NoBorder Camp 2010 in Bruxelles

On Sunday the 12th of December 2010 a undercover agent working for the Landeskriminalamt (LKA) Baden-Württemberg was uncovered in Heidelberg, Germany. His aim was to make contact with the Antifa scene via open left structures and to gather information about individuals as well as group structures to be presented directly to the LKA and the local state security division.

After three days of research and reconstruction the following has emerged:

Legend

The LKA informer had a German national identity card under the name of "Simon Brenner" (Nr.: 6920333978D-8604138-1511088), with the date of birth stated as 13.04.1986, born in the town of Leimen (Germany). Allegedly he formerly lived in Bad Säckingen in the Waldshut (Baden-Württemberg) area, which coheres with the license plate of his silver Nissan estate car (WT-??-???).

He used a mobile with the number 0049 (0) 151 20727114 0049 (0) 151 20727114 and the email addresses simonbrenner@ymail.com and californication@riseup.net, the latter has already been blocked. Under the user name 'californiaction' ha also wrote articles on Indymedia.



In the summer term 2010 he enrolled with most likely false documents at the University of Heidelberg in the subjects german philology and ethnology and for the winter term switched to ethnology and sociology (Student Nr.: 2858472).

Chronology

- November 2009: first appearance on the students information day, first contact to the SDS Heidelberg
- April 2010: enrollment at the University of Heidelberg, involvement with the SDS
- 24.04.2010: participation in the direct action "Umzingelung des AKW Biblis" ("encirclement of the nuclear power plant Biblis")
- 01.05.2010: participation in the blockades against the fascist protest in Berlin
- 15.05.2010: participation in the Campus Camp in Heidelberg, first contact the the "Kritische Initiative" (KI)
- 09.06.2010: participation in the anti education cuts protest in Heidelberg
- 26.07.2010: participation in a anti nuclear energy manifestation
- 15.08. - 21.08.2010: participation in a direct action climbing workshop
- 18.09.2010: participation in the the antifascist protests and blockades against the fascist protest in Sinsheim-Hoffenheim
- 27.09. - 03.10.2010: participation in the NoBorder Camp in Brussels (protests, direct action)
- 23.10.2010: participation in the antifascist protests in Rastatt and Rheinmünster-Söllingen against the fascist centre „Rössle“
- 06.11.2010: participation and co-organization of the protests against the nuclear waste transport and the 'south blockade' („Südblockade“)
- 14.11.2010: participation in the antifascist protests against the hero memorial of Heidelberg on the 'honor graveyard' („Ehrenfriedhof“)
- 27.11.2010: participation in the antifascists protests against the fascists protest in Sinsheim-Hoffenheim
- 11.12.2010 : organization and participation of the Critical Mass Action in Heidelberg

The end of the operation

The agent was uncovered by a holiday acquaintance, which he had met in France before the start of his undercover mission. To her he presented himself as "Simon" and told her that he was a police officer in Überlingen. This holiday acquaintance then met him in Heidelberg while she was visiting a friend within the scene. Although he tried to pressure her not to say anything, she told her friend that he was a police officer.

Confronted with this accusation on the next day (12.12.), he admitted to have been sent to Heidelberg as undercover agent for the LKA.

He said, that he did normal police officer duty in Überlingen, but then, as he wanted to pursue a career, had to decide between BFE and LKA. He went for the latter. There he was in the division I540 ("undercover investigations state security"), and availed of a special training for undercover investigations as well as a briefing on the situation of the Heidelberger left scene.

The aim of his mission he said was "information gathering and threat prevention", however without a concrete incident being the instigator nor there being a concrete suspicion (which by German law is necessary for such a mission). The long term goal of this long planed mission was to gather information about the "antifa-scene". Over a medium term, he said, he wanted to try and make contact to the Antifascist Initiative Heidelberg (AIHD) and to infiltrate them.

Further on, he said he gave reports to his superiors in Stuttgart every two weeks, as well as having been in contact in a regular manner over the phone with the Heidelberger sate security division for follow up assessments of political actions.

He also self-confessed that he was responsible for the raiding of a flat of a comrade as well as the enormous police presence at the Heidelberger "Ehrenfriedhof" during the protests against the hero memorial.

During his deployment of nearly 9 months, he said that he gathered all information he could get on political activists and there private environment, to subsequently file these and then forward them to his superiors.

Conclusion

The goal of this mission was obviously the infiltration of and the widespread information gathering on the Heidelberg left, especially of the organized antifa scene. Through the selection of the groups and actions in which he engaged, he tried to establish a comprehensible theoretical as well as practical radicalization for "his" political peers. For this the snitch used low-threshold open structures and groups, to gather a credible reputation within the "scene" to then in a long term avail of precarious and sensitive information.

Even though this case in a shocking way demonstrates how parts of the executive forces undermine the constitutionally enshrined imperative of the separation between police forces and intelligence services and simply ignore the law with such a ruthlessness, also especially towards the psychological condition of the immediate persons concerned, we herby pledge not to set open structures and 'scene-newbies' under general suspicion.

Open structures and groups are necessary low-threshold points of reference for politically interested people. Nonetheless, it is necessary, now even more so than before, to instigate discussions within the organized left about the risks of open structures and to work towards a security concept beyond blind paranoia or to call security standards already in place into our minds and into political praxis!

No collaboration with state repression institutions!
For solidarity!
Get organized! Support your local antifa!

ATTENTION: This reconstruction by no ways claims to be complete! If you should have more information about "Simon Brenner", pictures or actions in which he took part, details of his life (also before his undercover mission), please refer to the Rote Hilfe or the Antifascist Initiative Heidelberg, whose statements and press releases are documented in the following links:

http://www.rote-hilfe.de/static/news.php?a=86
https://linksunten.indymedia.org/fr/node/30691

Αναδημοσίευση από το Bruxelles Indymedia


ja sitten vielä brittien opiskelijademoihin liittyen:

Britain Stop Snitching

http://snitchwire.blogspot.com/2010/11/ ... ching.html

A pretty sickening report from the other side of the Atlantic after the November 10th occupation and improvisational demolition of Tory Party Headquarters in London earlier this week has surfaced. The media in the UK is assisting the State in tracking down rioters (that's why you mask up you silly geese! Say what you want about the "black bloc" set of tactics, but if there's a throw down with a bunch of media snapping pictures all over, I'd rather look like a mob of ninjas. ESPECIALLY in the most heavy surveillance state in the world. Fuck.), just as Big Media typically ends up being a perfect engine for repression.

Luckily, some kind of badass legalese underground railroad is forming up to help anyone presently splayed up on a wanted poster or likely waiting patiently to be identified by some software program. Check out the November 10th Defense Campaign, which is a really excellent idea:

"2. DO NOT say anything to anyone

You have the right to silence and the right not to incriminate yourself. So we recommend you do NOT. SAY NOTHING TO NO-ONE ONLINE OR OFFLINE, ON THE PHONE OR IN PERSON about the events. These are valuable resources for the Police to find you via internet trawling and phone tapping in order to pin a prosecution on you.

DO NOT SAY ANYTHING TO THE POLICE even if they say “it is in your best interests”. The Police are the arm of the State and a bureaucratic military organisation NEVER to be trusted. Even if the Police put your name and photo in the newspaper, arrest you, take your photo request a solicitor (see Christian Khan below) and demand your Solicitor advises you to say nothing. That way you can say the Solicitor advised you to say nothing in the event the State tries to infer guilty from the fact you said nothing!

Even if they have your picture, and say you committed an offence it does not mean you committed THAT offence or any offence at all. A picture of you holding an item that could cause damage to property does not amount to evidence of you causing damage with that item. So on these matters, like everything else, SAY NOTHING!"


Terrific advice!

Undercover policeman infiltrated anarchist group

http://signalfire.org/?p=6634



AN UNDERCOVER policeman who infiltrated a South Wales anarchist movement de-politicised the group by introducing a heavy drinking culture, an insider has told the Echo.

It emerged at the weekend that the 44-year-old police officer posed as a member of the Cardiff Anarchist Network between 2005 and 2009.

A member of the network, who formed a friendship with the clandestine officer, last night revealed how he turned the political campaigners into more of a “friendship group” by encouraging boozing.

The officer – identified only as “Officer B” – was unmasked by various websites at the weekend as more questions were raised about the role of undercover officers in the wake of the outing of PC Mark Kennedy.

The Cardiff Anarchist Network insider, who did not want to be named, described the officer as a “friendly and caring bloke” who never put himself on the frontline during demonstrations and protests.

“He certainly wasn’t what you’d call an agent provocateur,” he said.

“I can think of a few campaigns which would have been more successful had he not been involved in them. It wasn’t that he was preventing criminal activity, he was just preventing criminal protests.”

The Cardiff Anarchist Network is a left-wing, anti-capitalist group made up of about 60 members. The officer also had links with other local groups that included No Borders South Wales and Eat Out Vegan Wales.

While Officer B was involved in organising the group’s campaigns, he seemed to other members to be more interested in socialising than protesting.

“After a demonstration he’d always be first to the bar. He developed a culture of heavy drinking in the group and he turned us from a political group into more of a friendship group,” the source added.

“Before he came along we used to have our meetings, sit there for a couple of hours then go home. But when he started coming we’d be there until the bar closed; we were always the last ones to leave.”

The anonymous anarchist said Officer B lived in a flat in the Penylan area of Cardiff which was “surprisingly bare”.

“We were never particularly suspicious of him because we thought it would be ridiculous that the police would be interested in our boring group,” he said.

“But now I know who he really is, I’d love to have a word with him – not about the activism but about the personal relationships he betrayed.”

How beautiful redhead girlfriend blew eco-spy's cover after finding passport with his real name
Dailymail -
By Caroline Graham Last updated at 4:09 AM on 16th January 2011
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... al-it.html


It was a typical eco-activist’s romantic break. The wine was chilling in the cooler on the plastic camp table alongside the white Transit van in which the couple had spent the hours locked in embrace.

But for undercover police officer Mark Kennedy, it was a day that was to blow his cover.

For his girlfriend, a shapely red-headed Welsh activist, was to make a startling discovery. As she fumbled in the van’s glove compartment, looking for her sunglasses, she came across his passport.

And instead of the name Mark Stone – the name she had known her lover by for five years – the passport was in the name of Mark Kennedy.

Kennedy had been forced to hand back all identification in his fake name when his police handlers abruptly told him his work infiltrating the eco-activist world was over nine months earlier. But he had renewed contact with his girlfriend from those undercover days, and now, on a trip around Europe, she had unearthed his deepest secret.

Speaking for the first time, Kennedy said: ‘It was a nightmare. I’d known her for five years. We had been romantically involved during that whole time but the relationship had become far more serious in the last two years. She only knew me as Mark Stone or by my nickname Flash.

‘She was very cool. It was July 7 last year – my birthday. She said, “I have to talk to you. I found your passport. It’s in a different name. What’s going on?”

‘I had the story planned. I just was never expecting it. I can’t tell you the number of times it crossed my mind to tell her the truth, but I couldn’t. I knew it would probably end in disaster but, naively, I was so messed up in my head that I thought I would be able to work things out.

‘When she confronted me about the passport I thought I’d managed to blag my way out of it. Part of my cover story had been that I had previously been involved in dealing drugs. I told my girlfriend that’s why I had a couple of passports in different names. I thought she had bought it. She told me, “I don’t think you are a cop.” Her view was blinkered. She didn’t want to believe it.

‘But I now realise she went back and raised her suspicions with the other activists. They launched an investigation – and the walls came tumbling down.’


Mark is keen to deny reports that he used sex as a ‘tool’ to extract information from unsuspecting eco-activists during the eight years he worked as an undercover cop.

He said he had only two relationships, which had nothing to do with intelligence gathering.

‘It was a very promiscuous environment,’ he said. ‘I was offered sex repeatedly. And I was not the only undercover operator having a relationship. But our handlers never asked.’

His first relationship was a fling with a 22-year-old activist.

Kennedy says: ‘She came on to me at a party. She seduced me. I know it was wrong. There is a bunch of stuff in training about not succumbing to the wiles of women. But I had been undercover for several years and had had no intimate relationships during that stressful time.

‘She had numerous other boyfriends and occasionally she would see me. I don’t want to say more about her than that.’

The serious relationship, however, was with a striking Welsh redhead, a fellow activist who lived nearby.

‘Our paths crossed on numerous occasions,’ he said. ‘We were very attracted to each other but our love really blossomed when we spent a lot of time together in Iceland (protesting against the building of the Karahnjukar Dam).’

‘It was a beautiful place, a pristine wilderness but the circumstances we were in were volatile. The security guards were being violent while we were trying to protest peacefully. It was very dangerous.’

Kennedy says he helped save her life: ‘She had chained herself to the front of a huge dump truck which had been ordered to start driving off. As the vehicle started moving, she was slipping down and was going to be dragged beneath the wheels.

‘I raced over, climbed up the front of the truck and was trying to signal to the driver to hit the cut-off switch. He took no notice and revved the engine.

‘In the end I was so fearful for her life and others who were attached to the vehicle that I opened the bonnet and removed the battery terminals and it stopped dead.’


The protest at Iceland's Karahnjukar Dam, where Mark Kennedy stopped a dump truck

Direct action: The protest at Iceland's Karahnjukar Dam, where Mark Kennedy stopped a dump truck

Kennedy said that while undercover he ‘immersed’ himself in the alternative scene.

‘I got very stressed out,’ he said. ‘I would leave to go back and see my estranged wife and kids as often as I could but I did immerse myself in the culture. It was what was required of me. The more information I got, the happier HQ was.

‘But I knew it was dangerous. There was another undercover officer, who I will call “Officer A”. She supposedly met a guy, went off and lived abroad. But one of the activists bumped into her in a pub in London. I had to sit there in a meeting while the activists talked about this woman being an undercover cop. My nerves were fried.

‘The unit didn’t look after anyone. Another undercover guy vanished abroad. Every time this happened there was suspicion amongst the activists.’

He added: ‘I was living the life to a degree. What I found difficult was the dirt. They should have known I was a cop as I was the only one who ever cleaned anything. People didn’t buy food, they either stole it or took it out of bins. Often vegetables in the kitchen had mould on them. You couldn’t tell if they’d been there for a while or been salvaged. And they had no respect for other people’s property. They put rubbish everywhere.’

Mark Kennedy lived in three houses in Nottingham during his time undercover, two of them communal properties

‘One house was always full of shoplifted things,’ he said.

'One guy worked in a hardware store. He came back one day with a full chainsaw outfit – from the boots to the helmet. It was worth at least £1,000. I had to accept it but I told my cover officer. I was told that the shop was discreetly reimbursed by the police.’

The lifestyle amongst the activists was ‘varied’, Kennedy said: ‘Throughout the day we had workshops teaching everything from how to build a worm composter to how to break into a nuclear power station. I ran climbing and safety workshops. People were climbing during protests with little knowledge of how to make themselves safe.

‘It was very social. Of an evening there was always a bar and some kind of entertainment. There were always people dedicated to their workshops but there were also people who just turned up to drink.

‘It was a very promiscuous scene. Some people had five or six lovers, of which two or three would often turn up at the same time, which made it interesting. Girls on protest sites would sleep with guys in order to entice them to stay in these horrible places: cold, wet, with bad food and non-existent bathroom facilities.’
Mark Kennedy

He admits the drugs culture was prevalent: ‘At big parties there would be a couple of people who had a stash of recreational drugs – ketamine, speed. They turned out to be two of my accusers. I never took drugs.’

Kennedy’s work was abruptly stopped in October 2009, six months after he had been arrested with 113 others during a meeting to discuss a planned ‘invasion’ of the Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station in Nottinghamshire. The fact that he wasn’t charged when others were raised suspicions, and he had to withdraw from his undercover role.

He told his activist friends, including his girlfriend, that he was burnt out and moving to America. But in reality, he resigned from the police and took a job with private company Global Open, advising corporations on activist movements. However, without telling the police, he returned to Nottingham early last year and made contact with his old friends.

He says it was to ‘do the exit strategy properly’ and offer a more credible explanation for why he was leaving the activist movement. He bought a canal boat, the Tamarisk, as ‘an affordable place to live’.

It has since been claimed that Kennedy used the boat to bed more women – a claim he strongly denies.

‘It’s my home,’ he says. ‘I am now having to read reports about how it was my shag pad. That’s simply not true.’

He resumed his relationship with his girlfriend and last July they went on holiday to Europe – when she found his Mark Kennedy passport.

‘We came back to Nottingham together. I thought she believed me but she told the other activists.

‘Then when I went back to Ireland to visit my kids in mid-October I got a menacing phone call.’

He adds: ‘I recognised the voice. It was an ex- member of the Sea Shepherds (a marine conservation group) – someone I knew well. He said, “Is Jack there please?”

‘He was talking about my 12-year-old son. I said, “Excuse me?”

‘He said, “Jack, who is 12 or 13?”

‘I knew who it was. I was scared. Then the phone hung up. I did a “1471” and called the number back. It came from Nottingham. He said, “We know who you are. We know you’re a cop. We know where you live. Come and explain yourself.”

‘I was extremely fearful for my children because I know what the people I had been involved with were capable of. I had been infiltrating a lot of very serious people for a number of years. I needed to find out what they knew to assess the threat level. So I went.’

He arrived at a large detached house in Nottingham, a hub for activists in the East Midlands, in which people would sleep in every room.

‘I was absolutely s****ing myself,’ said Kennedy. ‘But I had to know what they knew. I was met at the door by a woman I knew well. She was smiling. I was led into a back room where one other person was sitting. I was asked to sit down. Then three or four other people came in.

‘They shut the door in a menacing way. I knew everyone there from previous actions. They sat in a semi-circle around me. It was hugely menacing. I told them nothing to start with. They just kept saying they knew I was a cop, that I was married with kids, they knew my mum. They knew my home address.

‘I danced around in circles for four hours. It was exhausting. I cried a lot. It was the end of my tether. They broke me. An hour into it they brought my girlfriend in and the look of devastation on her face destroyed me. It was more than I could take.

‘I didn’t give anyone up. They knew about Officer A, that she was a cop. I didn’t give her up.

‘They said they wanted me to make a statement admitting what I had done, which they could make public. I said I would think about it. I fled. I ran away. ‘

Already suffering stress since his arrest at the power station meeting, Kennedy said the confrontation made him very ill, and he sought help from a police psychiatrist

‘He said I was suffering from post-traumatic stress,’ he says. ‘I was totally chewed up. I felt overwhelming guilt. I was crying all the time. I was shaking and wasn’t eating. I was having suicidal thoughts. I went from someone who had always been happy and confident into someone who didn’t want to leave the house.’

Kennedy says he’s been ‘hiding’ ever since fleeing the Nottingham house, adding: ‘Both sides have been waiting for my statement – the police and the activists. This interview is my statement.’


REVEALED: The big undercover operations

By CAROLINE GRAHAM

Transport for G8 Summit, Gleneagles, 2005: ‘A massive anti-capitalism protest. I took on the role of transport organiser, hiring seven or eight minibuses. When the action – to block roads around Gleneagles – came about I could tell the intelligence unit where people were to be dropped off, which roads were to be blockaded and what sort of equipment they would be carrying. The intelligence that was passed was invaluable. I got a commendation for that. I was told information I provided was passed straight to Tony Blair’s desk.’

G20 Summit, London, 2008: ‘Tasked with finding out what protest plans were, I fed back that no one had any strategic or specific plans to cause major disruption. People were going to rally outside the Bank of England but I had not identified any specific threat. The rally was over-zealously policed. Ian Tomlinson died. I am not party to all the intelligence the police had. The people I was tasked to talk to had no intention of violence. The police may have had other intelligence.’

Stopping the Drax coal train, 2008: ‘A Greenpeace-funded operation. Drax is a coal-fired power station in Yorkshire. The action was to stop a coal train going into Drax and create a media spectacle. Greenpeace asked me if I could drive protesters to a place to board the train. I hired a Transit for three days. The action went ahead, they stopped the train and dropped 77 tons of coal on the tracks. It didn’t do anything. Drax has three weeks’ worth of coal backed up.’

Youth centre occupation, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2008: ‘There was a large squatted building that was a youth centre that was due to be demolished. It had 50 to 60 people in there occupying it. I was infiltrating to find out what the security measures were. They had petrol bombs, concrete in buckets on the roof, trapdoors in the floor for cops to fall in. The information was given to the Danish police and the building was raided. However, the eviction sparked riots.’

Didcot power station, 2006: ‘I was asked because of my climbing ability to assist with a Greenpeace publicity stunt to hang a banner off a tower to highlight the fact Didcot was putting its ash into a local reservoir. When I got to the top, a good 150ft, the guy who was supposed to do it with me bottled out. I ended up doing it myself.’

Tosi ärsyttävää miten joka helvetin jutussa pitää olla siitä, että "hän oli hyvännäköinen walesilainen punapää". Ei varmaan hirveän kivaa sille tyypille, niitä ei varmaan oo hirveän monta. Kyttien identiteettejä suojellaan kyllä viimeisen päälle prkl.

Ja Ungdomshuset, wtf? Just joo.

***

uk.indymedian artikkeleista, kommenteista ja siellä linkatuista valtavirtamedioista poimittua sitä sun tätä:


Tässä Kennedyn lisäksi "Officer A ja B" eli "Lyn Watson" ja "Mark/Marco Jacobs".
Kuvia ja infoa.
UK Imc: Three undercover political Police unmasked as infiltrators into UK Anarchist, Anti-Fascist and Climate Justice movements (15.01.2011)

_____________________________________

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2011/01/ ... n#comments
(19.01.2011)

Today's Independent claims that Kennedy, who is missing but believed to be in the USA, has called in publicity guru Max Clifford as he "prepares to sell his story".

Recent revelations that Kennedy confirmed that a Leeds based activist, who used the name Lyn Watson, had also been a police infiltrator, are likely to have caused some scurrying around by cops yesterday.
The Guardian "decided, after representations from senior police officers, to refer to her only as Officer A, and to use pixellated pictures of her."

However it has already come to light that 'Lyn Watson' was a member of the now-defunct Clown Army and acted as a medic at Climate Camps, where she helpfully offered radios for hire!!!. Two pictures of her were published by Indymedia yesterday, which would have left the police with no choice other than to pull her from any undercover operations she might have currently been involved in. And she is not the only one!! According to the Guardian:

A police chief with detailed knowledge of the deployments of undercover officers in the protest movement said Kennedy's breach of protocol could lead to the "relocation of a considerable number of people".

That included undercover officers currently involved in ongoing police investigations across the UK and their families. "This is serious stuff," the police chief said. "Lots of people are at risk – their lives are at risk."

The irony of police operations being disrupted by Kennedy should not be lost on us. As a recent FitWatch article pointed out:

"Some activists at the heart of international organising believe that the involvement of Mark and others like him ultimately led to the collapse of international networks aimed at organising protest on a European and International scale."

Because, despite Hugh Ordes protestations on Newsnight last night that the deployment of Kennedy was justified by his unmasking of the planned Ratcliffe action, the reality is that the action had not been in its planning stages for seven years, and much of Kennedy's role is likely to have been disruption of groups.
...
Let us hope that further revelations about Kennedy come to light, to illustrate what a nasty piece of work he is, and that he cannot be trusted by anyone, {not even his handlers who have scurried off to the States to track him down and no doubt try and shut him up) before Max Clifford gets an opportunity to start earning commission on book deals and other money making deals (seriously - a goddamn movie?!!) for the former copper and corporate spy.

__________________________

"He is now understood to have private security officers keeping a “discrete” watch on him after he voiced fears for his life and is being represented by Max Clifford, the public relations specialist."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthn ... ement.html
___________________________

"looking at the evidence on hand it seems quite clear to me that former dibble mark kennedy is a self-serving egotist who deserves no sympathy from any quarters.

-he sells his services to the state on a considerable salary and a per-diem that would rival most succesful rock bands'.
-he parts company with the state for hiterto unclear reasons and subsequently attempts to sell his services to a private company in much the same role as before.
-he is 'outed', expresses 'mixed feelings' (and his services now invalid), sells his story to the highest bidder.

crocodile tears aside, mark kennedy looks after mark kennedy.

and now max clifford looks after him too. cunt."
________________________________

"Mark Kennedy... has claimed that at least 15 other agents had infiltrated the movement [and said that by the time he left in 2009 there were at least four others active], and disclosed that sexual entanglements with them were commonplace."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthn ... ement.html

Useat kommentoijat ovat vahvasti eri mieltä hänen väitteestään, että oli "vain kahden naisen kanssa". Muutama taisi käyttää hänestä nimikettä "sex beast".

"While gathering intelligence Mr Kennedy also appeared to revel in the 'alternative' lifestyle of his fellow militants. He even had a sideline as a DJ, staging parties in Berlin.

Mr Fitzpatrick, 42, an American documentary maker, said: "People liked Mark and he liked the beers, the parties, the women. If there was a party at the weekend, sure we'd end up there. He was a great DJ. His name was DJ Escape. That's is funny now.

"But thinking about it, what he did to these girls is an absolute disgrace."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthn ... fairs.html
______________________________

Kommentti re: G8 Gleneagles: "As for all that detailed information about blockading plans, his information was either not as complete or as accurate as he pretends or didn’t get through. The cops were repeatedly caught on the hop and didn’t have a clue where and when we were going to pop up. In particular, they were phased by the fact that most people left the Stirling site (from which Mark Kennedy was organising transport) much earlier than they anticipated and were away in the hills during the night before the action. He talks some right shite."
_____________________________

Kennedy, Global Open and EON - time for some answers

From the Daily Mail:
“Then in January (2010) I was approached by a private company which advises corporations about activist trends. It’s run by Rod Leeming, a former Special Branch officer. I’d never met him before.’ The company, Global Open, is based in London and has advised major corporations including E.On – which runs the Ratcliffe-on-Soar power plant – and BAE. Kennedy handed in his resignation from the police in January, ending work in March.”

E.ON has specifically denied that it employed Kennedy but admitted that it used Global Open – although possibly not in 2010.

According to the Daily Telegraph:
“’The pressure upon him and his family must now be weighty,’ says Rod Leeming of Global Open, who says his company had little to do with Kennedy. ‘Sooner or later, I think that he will make a statement to correct some of the speculation on the internet and in the press.’”

‘Little’ is more than nothing and so both Kennedy and Leeming are confirming that they had some kind of commercial relationship.

It has also been documented that Kennedy used the home address of Global Open director Heather Millgate for one of his companies.

The clear implication is therefore that Kennedy was working for Global Open, that there was some overlap with the police but that it was probably for clients other than EON.

Global Open Ltd has often emphasised its work for pharmaceutical companies and the decision of Kennedy -- a meat eater -- to start attending animal rights meetings in 2010 suggests that this was being done to provide them with intelligence on activists.

This raises a number of questions:

1. Did Kennedy pass Global Open personal information gathered on activists while he was a police officer?
2. How many other former undercover officers are employed by Global Open?
3. How many other infiltrators does it operate?
4. What companies are receiving information from Global Open?
5. It was reported that Heather Millgate’s husband is a former SB officer. Does he work for Global Open?
6. Who in the police introduced Kennedy to Leeming?
7. Was Global Open providing the police with information obtained by Kennedy?
8. Was Global Open aware of the apparent doubts that the police were having about Kennedy?
9. EON said that is now using a different company to acquire information about protesters -- which one?

There is clearly a case for Global Open to say how it acquires its information, its links with the police and which companies employ its services.

____________________

"I don’t believe his account of the “horrendous Kangaroo court.” The fact is, he needn’t have turned up for that meeting. He knew he was suspected and simply wanted to find out what information people had and whether it was conclusive, which it was."
____________________________

Epävakuuttavaa katumuslässytystä:
"They became my friends. They supported me and they loved me. All I can do now is tell the truth. I don't think the police are the good guys and the activists are bad or vice versa. Both sides did good things and bad things. I am speaking out as I hope the police can learn from the mistakes they made", he said.

"As the years went on, I did get a sort of Stockholm syndrome. But I never lost sight of my work. I texted and informed on a daily basis. But I began to like the people I was with. I formed lasting friendships."

"I had no other friends. I was estranged from my wife. My life was undercover. Of course I cared about them. But I didn't go rogue. I was immersing myself in the culture to do my job, to be credible."

Huvittavaa keskiluokkaisuutta:
"I began to live the life and enjoy it. People have this image of hairy tree huggers and, yes, there is an element of that … But there are also a lot of educated, passionate people with degrees who really believe in what they are doing." 'Educated People With Degrees'

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2 ... r-for-life
_______________________________

"Unsuprisingly the article is full of PC Kennedy's lies.

One interesting bit is which things he has chosen to blatantly lie about now, in the full knowledge that dozens of people are in a position to know they are lies. Is that a calculated choice, given the chance anyone is going to seriously pull him up on it is so low? Is it worth making the evidence of his current dishonesty clear - can his chances of turning the tide of public sympathy towards him / getting an expensive book deal be disrupted?

I'm thinking of:

"I never took drugs."

He said he had only two [sexual] relationships.
Presumably admitting to only a relationship which in the end found him out, and 'Anna' who wrote the Guardian article."
____________________________________

UK Imc: reward offered for info on Kennedy
mr. sheen | 16.01.2011 17:53
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2011/01/ ... n#comments

In the light of claims made in the Mail on Sunday by "Nark" Kennedy about the cleanliness of activists, we want to turn the spotlight onto Kennedy's record in this area - and we're offering a reward!

Kennedy claims his delicate sensibilities were offended by hygiene standards in activist circles :

‘I was living the life to a degree. What I found difficult was the dirt. They should have known I was a cop as I was the only one who ever cleaned anything. People didn’t buy food, they either stole it or took it out of bins. Often vegetables in the kitchen had mould on them. You couldn’t tell if they’d been there for a while or been salvaged. And they had no respect for other people’s property. They put rubbish everywhere.’
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z1BDlF88MB

So, we want help in examining Kennedy's own performance in this area, about which we remain sceptical. We are offering a reward of a hamper of skipped, mouldy vegetables and stolen foodstuffs (all marinated in a haze of cannabis smoke) to anyone who can provide evidence of Kennedy EVER washing up or helping with the cleaning at any of the many activist gatherings or meetings he attended. We await the rush....

mr. sheen
- e-mail: laughing@police.lies

_____

Eka kommentti summaa kaiken:
"He even paid people to clean out his car and do his ironing!"

Kooste:

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2011/01/472317.html


********************************************************
“Marco Jacobs”, “Mark Stone”, “Lynn Watson”

Three police officers all thought to work for The National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU), a political police unit with extensive links to large corporations, have been exposed by activists in the UK.

Two of them are known to have worked outside of UK police jurisdiction. All have actively taken part in illegal activity.

=====
"MARCO JACOBS" also known as “Mark Jacobs” Real name unknown

Infiltrated the Dissent! network of resistance against the G8 in Brighton, in 2004. Following suspicions that he was a policeman there, he moved to Cardiff, Wales where he successfully infiltrated Cardiff Anarchist Network (CAN).

He encouraged ideological and personal splits within CAN.

He had at least one sexual relationship within activist circles.

Using his connections he then became involved in the Rising Tide Network. He was at the centre of a set of police raids and arrests that targeted climate justice activists, including one on his own flat.

He was involved in the No Border campaigns for freedom of movement. He was minute taker at UK wide gatherings. He had prior knowledge of No Borders successful blockades to prevent immigration snatch squad dawn raids on families,

He attended (with “Mark Stone”) a meeting in Poland prior to the G8 in Heligendam, It is believed that only one genuine UK based activist was at this event!

He travelled with UK activists to Germany to oppose the G8 in Heligendam, Germany 2007 and was actively involved in autonomous block planning at the Redelich camp.

In 2009 he attended planning meetings in Dijon for the Anti NATO resistance to take place in Strasbourg. He arrived with “Stone” . Set up website promoting this action.

He suddenly pulled out of attending the resistance to the G8 in St Petersburg Russia. Remained in contact with CAN activists in Russia.

Towards the end of his career in Cardiff, friends became suspicious of him and he was increasingly being left out of sensitive discussions. Ironically this included the location of the 2008 Camp for Climate Action, the location of which was known by a small group including “Watson” and “Stone”.

======
“MARK STONE” Real name Mark Kennedy

Distributed Zapatista Coffee 'Rebelde' from Germany to UK social centres In 2004.

Extensive involvement in Ireland
Ireland Early 2004 attended a grassroots gathering promoting Scotland G8,
Ireland 2004 Mayday protests. Involved in attacking police. Supplied defensive equipment. People serve prison sentences relating to material delivered by him from UK.
Ireland 2004 Protests against George Bush summit at Dromoland castle.
Ireland 2005 Attended EFYA winter meeting in Co Clare 2005 Attended a meeting and fund-raiser for the G8 in Belfast.
Ireland 2006 Attended the Anarchist Bookfair and then went to Rossport solidarity camp.

UK Coordinated transport for the Dissent network of resistance against the G8 camp in Stirling Scotland in 2005. (a fleet of minibuses) Gained name “Transport Mark”

Was involved in planing Camp for Climate Action “land group” from 2006 onwards often in driver role.

Was for a number of years involved in Climate Justice groups which faced repeated raids and arrests. These groups have been actively disrupted during this period.

Had sexual relationships with a number of activists.

Involved in anti-police anti corporate actions with Saving Iceland campaign in Iceland.

Was actively involved in Berlin radical left groups for some months prior to the Heligendam G8. Actively promoted a violent assault on Berlin business district. (Plan

Took part in riots surrounding the eviction of ungdomshuset “youth house” In Copenhagen Denmark.

Is believed to have visited Denmark after this point. (can Danish comrades confirm?)

Using established anarchist contacts in Denmark he was well placed to inform on UK activists and others attending the Cop 13 negotiations in 2009.

Involved in anti-fascist activity. Encouraged anti-EDL campaigners to attack coaches carrying members of the extreme nationalist group to Bradford in 2010.

More recent involvement in Animal Rights circles such as attending 2010 international AR gathering in Milan, Italy.

Appears to have moved into Private Spying. He shared a business address with a director of Global Open a company of private spies composed of ex -Special Branch, (political police.)

Kennedys role, has received intense media coverage in the UK, following the collapse of a court case against activists on Monday 10th January. This has led to highest ranking policeman Sir Hugh Orde defending infiltration of left wing groups on the Newsnight television programme.

Mark Kennedy spoke about his infiltration to extreme right-wing newspaper The Mail on Sunday, He claimed to have operational influence over German and Danish police.

Both “Marco Jacobs” and “Mark Stone” attended the Dissent! Europe gathering prior to Strasbourg, France anti NATO in 2009. They arrived together, very little real UK based activist involvement. (same time as G20 London)

======
“LYNN WATSON” Real name unknown

In late 2003 Lynn Watson attended event at Aldermaston nuclear weapons factory and then joined a Trident Ploughshares affinity group. NVDA anti nuclear weapons group.
She took part in non-violence training (one of the trainers didn’t get there as he was picked up on a warrant as he came off the ferry!) and attended a TP planning meeting.
During 2004 she also went to Aldermaston Womens Peace Camp and was very active in the Block the Builders campaign. (Direct action) She said she lived in Bournemouth and did care work.

In 2005 she moved to Leeds, Yorkshire. Active in environmental activist groups centred around anarchist social centre, The Common Place.
“Lynn Watson” used Bank Account.
Sortcode: 560054
Account Number: 33516774
IBAN: GB97NWBK56005433516774
Bank: NATIONAL WESTMINSTER BANK PLC

Lynn was part of a small group who planned the site take for the Camp for Climate action in 2006 drax and 2007 Heathrow, less so 2008 kingsnorth.

Was member of UK Action medics collective, who provide first aid to the direct action community. Lynn was involved with UK action medics at Dissent G8 in Gleneagles 2005, and later that year at Earth First! gathering in Derbyshire. Later, she hosted an Action medics meeting at her house in Leeds.

She was also the UK contact when medics went to G8 in Russia, so the address they were staying at may have been passed on. (to Russian secret state?)
( “Marco Jacobs” filled similar role for CAN!)

Was member of the Rebel Clown Army. (unclear if this made them any less effective)

Had sexual relationships with some activists. Was “camera shy”.

Is not known to have operated outside of the UK. (one unconfirmed sighting with “Mark Stone” in Berlin May 2006)

“Watson” “Stone” and “Jacobs” seem to have disappeared from left political circles in the UK.

********************************************************
Please add factual comments/corrections here so that statement can been produced for distribution through Indymedia and associated networks.

Please do not post anything you do not have direct knowledge of or can show where it comes from.
Please do not reveal any names or information that may reveal names of people other than the police themselves.
Please do not post the fact you once had tea with one of the infiltrators, only facts which develop a picture of their political involvement.
If groups could make statements that would be helpful.
Face to camera shots of “Marco” and “Lynn” would be very useful
Please do not repost information from other media there is a discussion of other media here.
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2011/01/472102.html



http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2011/01/ ... n#comments

http:// http://www.spyequipmentuk.co.uk/gsm-bug ... y-bug.html

Removing your phone battery is no longer enough
@An activist + @M

@M You may wish to reconsider your pseudonym as it was previously used here by someone I know to be an unexposed infiltrator with a penchant for strangling girls. You probably didn't know that so no offence, but some of the IMCistas will.

@An activist,
You thanked me for explaining why taking phone batteries out isn't good enough security, and said you'd now be able to explain why to others. Don't use my arguments though, I just found a cheap product that will be much more persuasive. It wasn't for sale to the public when I last wrote on the subject, so I just wrote a new article explaining in depth the articles, only for this shitty PC I am on to be hacked off the internet - for the first time in 4 years this has happened! It wasn't that great an article though, this was the highlight-




GSM Battery Bug

NEW! This incredibly disguised GSM bug must be almost as covert as they can be made. Perfectly resembling a Lithium battery for a mobile phone it is stealth by design.

At first glance and even second glance, this product has the outward appearance of a lithium ion mobile phone battery. The fact that it is a GSM listening device is completely disguised after a SIM Card has been inserted and sealed. Place the device on a desk in a tray, on a shelf or anywhere suitable in full view and even the most observant person will be fooled by its genuine appearance. Once deployed it is simply a matter of dialling the number of the SIM Card that you have inserted upon which the device will auto-answer making no sound or giving away any indication whatsoever. You will then be able to listen in to the surrounding environment up to 5 metres away.

Features

* Quad-band for worldwide coverage
* Operating standby time of up to 3 days
* Maximum calling in time of up to 3 hours
* Speedy recharge of battery - approx. 1 hour
* Supplied with special charger and Orange SIM

Please Note: This unit will not operate on the Virgin or T Mobile networks. Please ensure that you have relevant GSM network coverage in the area which the device is going to be deployed
£154.80 (inc VAT)

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2011/01/ ... n#comments

Ei kai "piireissä" ole koskaan tarvittu kyttiä ajamaan ihmisiä toisiaan vastaan?

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2011/01/ ... n#comments

We Will Not Be Disrupted

Disruption is one of the purposes of political policing and infiltration by the likes of Mark Kennedy and whoever Lyn and Marcos really are. As a counter to depression and disintegration, let’s look at how the pieces are falling from all this and think how to re-organise.

These destructors and their depraved controlling minds think they’re onto a “win-win”. With specific intelligence they may, and sometimes do, disrupt our activities directly, they can try to fragment us by sowing dissention, as Marcos apparently attempted, but if / when they are discovered they rely on us self-destructing through recrimination, mutual suspicion and internecine squabbling.

Is that’s what’s going to happen now? Is it fuck! Let’s not do that, eh..

So this is a call to arms
This is a call to legs
This is a call to brains

Sure, we have analysis to carry out and lessons to learn. Much of that is not going to happen on IM for Hugh Ordure and his ilk to lap up, so this is not a call to arseholes. It’s highly unlikely the last infiltrator has been rooted out, and there are bound to be new ones. How can we improve security whilst remaining open, because we have nothing to be ashamed of and everything to win?

It would be easy to get depressed in the current situation, to think we can’t trust anybody, to wonder if we can really achieve anything, to lose our future-orientation and determination to fight for the only planet we’ve got and for it to be free from all exploitation and oppression.

Paradoxically, a strong antidote to that and an important enhancement of security would be for us to trust and cherish each other more, to know ourselves and our comrades better, whilst being open to new people, new ideas and new inspiration. Above all, we need to discuss and understand our politics more deeply in a context where we’re never going to agree with each other about everything, but are bound together by a commitment to action, and to informing our ideas by, through and during what we do.

It’s significant that so many people who were close to Flash Mark, and shared many ventures, many stresses and many good times with him, now say things like “..but I never really had a political discussion with him”. We have been too readily infiltrated by taking our politics as read, or as signified by mere cultural superficialities.

Could the likes of Flash have remained unsuspected for so long if we’d had a more analytical and consciously transformative politics of direct action, without slipping into exclusivity or “right on” doctrine? Would he have been sussed much sooner against such a background? Not everyone has thought through their politics with equal clarity, of course, and some people are more instinctive than intellectual in their approach, but I can’t help feeling that Mark Kennedy’s fundamental motivations were never apparent because we don’t talk about such things as often or in such depth as we need to..


REASONS TO BE CHEERFUL

Many not to be, of course. On the shit side, there’s apparently people in Ireland who were sent down for possessing stuff Mark had supplied to them. People and networks in other countries may have been compromised. There needs to be a reckoning of all such damage and what, if anything, can now be done to repair it.

But on the jammy sandwich side, the powers of darkness have tripped over each other big time. The disruption, disintegration, unwelcome exposure and mutual recrimination frenzy they’ve managed to cause themselves is massive and will go on for some time. NPOIU, NETCU and their seedy mates are now hanging morosely round the Shit Creek Paddle Shop and may soon find the stock exhausted. We can also be quietly satisfied, though not complacent, that of the three infiltrators now confirmed (or virtually so in the case of Marcos), two of them came under heavy suspicion and disappeared. Only in the case of Kennedy was a stroke of luck required.

Certainly, there’s many bad aspect to all this, not least the hurt and distress some people are going through. But it’s not all bad by any means. We’re used to thinking and moving quicker than the cops on the streets and in the fields, to shifting, adapting and improvising while they stand around waiting to be told what to do. It’s one of our strengths, so let’s use it now and turn chaos into opportunity. Let’s fashion renewal and improvement out of Sir Hugh’s ordure.


P.S. The above is not the answer to everything. It’s meant to be just a start, and this may not be the best place to continue it.


Kommenteista:

Mark Kennedy undercover spy case sparks shake-up of police operations

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/jan/1 ... r-end-acpo

The Association of Chief Police Officers is to be stripped of its power to run operational units in the wake of the case of Mark Kennedy, the undercover police officer who spent seven years posing as an environmental activist.

The Home Office minister, Nick Herbert, acknowledged for the first time that "something had gone very wrong" in the Kennedy case, which led to the collapse of the trial of six people accused of planning to invade a Nottinghamshire power station.

Herbert told MPs the case demonstrated strongly that Acpo should no longer have the responsibility for national organisations such as the unit that runs covert operations gathering intelligence on domestic extremists in England and Wales.

He disclosed to the Commons home affairs select committee that the Metropolitan police is poised to take over control of the national public order intelligence unit (NPOIU) to provide "proper accountability" for its activities.

He said a lead force such as the Met or the soon to be established National Crime Agency should take over national operational units such as the NPOIU.

"The government is strongly of the view that there needs to be proper accountability for Acpo and its successor body," he said.

"Units like this should not be operated by Acpo and they should be operated either by a lead police force or in future the National Crime Agency where there is proper governance in place." Acpo currently runs national units involved in running counter-terrorism work, domestic extremism, vehicle crime and criminal records.

A second blow to the future of Acpo, the professional strategy body for the police service, was dealt when it emerged today that the Association of Police Authorities have refused to continue to fund the body, pleading lack of finance. The home secretary, Theresa May, has written to the APA asking them to reconsider their decision.

Senior Met officers today promised that the activities of undercover officers will be brought within the London's force's "control and command system" to ensure such operations are conducted within the rules, lawfully and ethically.

"We have to make sure that we don't overexpose them," said the Met's acting commissioner, Tim Godwin. "We have to make sure that we don't leave them too long if that is the case."

Godwin said the domestic extremism unit had already been identified by Acpo as needing proper accountability. "As a result negotiations are in hand to bring it into the Met so that it would come within our command and control system, which would ensure a) compliance with the law, b) compliance with rules and c) compliance with ethics."

Herbert told MPs he had no knowledge of the case until the Guardian disclosed that the prosecution of six activists planning to invade Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station collapsed because of Kennedy's role in organising and funding it.

He also refused to comment on claims by MPs that both the names of the business secretary, Vince Cable, and the Green party leader, Caroline Lucas, were listed on the domestic extremism database simply because they had been present at peaceful protests.

The home affairs committee chairman, Keith Vaz, who said Kennedy was "no James Bond", also pressed the minister to investigate the alleged £200,000 expenses bill run up by Kennedy.

Herbert said such undercover operations were matters for the police within the legal framework of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 and under the oversight of the surveillance commissioner.

"In this case it is clear that something operationally has gone very wrong and that is now the subject of an Independent Police Complaints Commission investigation," said Herbert.

"I think everybody is concerned by the Kennedy case and we have an IPCC precisely to investigate this kind of thing. It is right that the IPCC should look into it and then we should take note of that."

Brittipoliisi nai ympäristöaktivistin, jota hänen piti vakoilla

http://www.hs.fi/ulkomaat/artikkeli/Bri ... 5263210232

Brittipoliisi meni naimisiin ympäristöliikkeen aktivistin kanssa, jonka hän tapasi vakoilutehtävissä. Pari sai myös lapsia, Guardian-lehti kertoo.

Jim Sutton -salanimellä ympäristöliikkeeseen soluttautunut vakooja on neljäs poliisi, jonka tiedetään soluttautuneen ympäristöaktivistien riveihin.

Näistä neljästä kolmea syytetään siitä, että he ovat olleet seksuaalisessa suhteessa kohdehenkilöidensä kanssa.

Ylikonstaapeli Jon Murphyn mukaan "ei ole koskaan hyväksyttävää", että peitetehtävissä toimivat poliisit nukkuisivat kohteidensa kanssa.

Helsingin Sanomat on aiemmin raportoinut 40-vuotiaasta Mark Kennedystä, joka on kertonut katuvansa vakoiluaan ympäristöaktivistina. Guardianin selvitysten mukaan hänellä oli useita seksisuhteita seitsenvuotisen tehtävänsä aikana.

Kennedy piileksii paraikaa Yhdysvalloissa, ja hänen uskotaan paljastaneen vakoojakavereitaan.

Kennedy itse kiistää tällaiset väitteet.

Viisi vuotta peitetehtävissä toiminut "Jim Sutton" aloitti suhteensa "myyränä" toimiessaan, ja katosi myöhemmin naisen elämästä.

Vuoden päästä hän palasi ja kertoi olevansa poliisi.

He menivät myöhemmin naimisiin ja saivat kaksi lasta, mutta erosivat kaksi vuotta sitten, Guardian kertoo.

Statement from Saving Iceland Concerning the Case of Undercover Policeman Mark “Flash/Stone” Kennedy
http://www.savingiceland.org/2011/01/st ... e-kennedy/

Mark Kennedy The Saving Iceland collective is at the moment inundated with requests from the corporate media for detailed information about the infiltration of our network by police spy Mark Kennedy . We have also been receiving pressure from individuals who have been active with SI to collaborate with journalists.

Saving Iceland would like to make it clear that we are mindful about keeping our vow to respect and protect the privacy of all the great people who have taken part in our struggle against the corporate destruction of Icelandic nature.

By entering into discussions with journalists on matters outside the sphere of the issues of our struggle, such as the private lives of individuals in our network, we would be in serious breach of the trust and solidarity that has been the core of our network.

Below is a statement Saving Iceland released to the Guardian on 13 January 2011. This is the only platform that we are prepared to discuss Mark Kennedy’s time with Saving Iceland.

Regrettably we are not prepared to participate in an interview about the police spy Mark Kennedy. However, we would like to make the following statement:

Yes, Mark Kennedy came to Iceland in the summer of 2005 and took part in actions against ALCOA and the dams at Karahnjukar.

His case is a clear example about how low governments are prepared to stoop to, in this case the British and Icelandic, in their attempts to criminalize people who use their right to protest and who challenge the abuses of power by the State and corporations.

What we find interesting in this context is whether the Icelandic police were made aware by the British authorities of the presence of this British police spy in the Saving Iceland camp and if they received any of the information gathered by him while he was active as an agent.

So far the Icelandic State police have not answered the request of the Icelandic National Broadcasting about whether they communicated with Mark Kennedy and his superiors. Only the local police force in the east, where the dams and ALCOA factory are located, have issued an evasive answer stating that they had not “intervened” with the “protester” Mark Stone during the protests.

It is also interesting whether Mark Kennedy took part in the training of Icelandic police officers when they attended a course with the British police in the winter of 2005-2006 where they received training in how to violate groups such as Saving Iceland.

Clearly the presence of Mark Kennedy in Icelandic jurisdiction, as an active agent of the British police, violated Icelandic and international laws, even if there was an official collaboration between the two authorities in this respect.

In either case the one or both governments are guilty of violating basic human rights of the people they were spying on.

The Saving Iceland Collective.

How undercover officers squandered millions of pounds, with flash cars, luxury flats and up to 14 hours' overtime a day

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... e-day.html

His revelations in last week’s MoS dominated news bulletins. Now the police spy who posed as an eco-warrior reveals how colleagues enjoyed flash cars, luxury flats - and up to 14 hours’ overtime a day...

Police spy Mark Kennedy told last night how his bosses squandered millions on ‘unnecessary luxuries’ while infiltrating green campaigners.

The 41-year-old undercover officer, who posed as an eco-warrior for eight years, said his handlers drove top-of-the-range BMWs and Audis, rented luxury apartments and claimed huge sums in overtime.

In a series of extraordinary interviews from a safe house in America where he has been in hiding, Kennedy – who became long-haired hippy Mark Stone to infiltrate activist groups in Britain and Europe – lifted the lid on what he calls the ‘shocking mismanagement’ of undercover officers and the squandering of millions of pounds worth of taxpayers’ money.

He revealed how:

* Superior offices blew their budget on expensive Volvo XC90 4x4 vehicles that were ‘highly impractical’ but ‘looked flash’.

* The National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU) that he worked for rented luxury London apartments for staff, complete with concierges, gyms in the base-ment and spectacular views.

* He earned massive overtime payments every day for the whole eight years he was undercover. Kennedy says: ‘I was taking home more money than an inspector who was two ranks higher than me.’

Kennedy took part in protests throughout Britain and Europe, including invading power stations and infiltrating animal rights protests. He even took part in G8 riots in Germany. He was ‘outed’ among campaigners as a spy after falling in love with a red-haired activist who discovered his real name in his passport.

In last week’s Mail on Sunday, he told the remarkable story of his time undercover – and revealed that he was now in fear of his life after receiving death threats from activists. His undercover role was thrust into the limelight after the trial of six activists allegedly involved in a planned attack on Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station collapsed amid reports that Kennedy had offered to aid the defence.

Since his activities were exposed, serious questions have been raised about police covert operations against environmental groups – and the cost of them. Kennedy, who left the police after being taken off his undercover role, revealed: ‘Each undercover officer cost £250,000 a year in wages, overtime, cost of transport and housing. Every day I was on the job, even if I was at 'home' in bed watching telly and doing the laundry, I got five hours’ overtime. My handler got the same overtime.

‘When I was actively involved in operations I would get the maximum, which was 14 hours of overtime on top of my eight-hour working day.

‘They paid me for 22 hours of work which was the maximum I could claim in a 24-hour period. This could go on for weeks. My handler, or cover officer, would get the same.

'He would be at home or at a hotel near me if I was abroad. But, to be honest, I really earned it. I was living undercover for eight years. I slept in doss houses. I put myself in danger. I lived a lie.’

However, Kennedy added that he was ‘appalled’ by how much taxpayers’ money was ‘squandered’ on unnecessary luxuries for operatives. ‘Handlers were given Volvo XC90s from about 2006 onwards. It was a stupid car to have. When I had to meet my cover officer I felt the car was a liability because if I’d been seen getting into it my activist “friends” would have asked questions about who I was seeing.

‘They had seven of these cars. If we all had a meeting it looked like the CIA had turned up or something – seven identical flash cars in the car park of a pub.

‘Towards the end of 2009 the handlers were told they could choose their own new cars and were buying Five Series BMWs and top-of-the-range Audis.’

He told how police spies would be appointed from all over Britain and the NPOIU would provide accommodation for them.

‘They would rent expensive apartments for them in Central London. Around 2002, I went to an apartment near Tobacco Dock [an expensive area of London’s Docklands] which cost a fortune.

‘It was for two officers attached to the unit. They were laughing about the luxury flat and how they had a view of Tower Bridge. They had a couple of apartments near Vauxhall Bridge Road near Pimlico.

‘I have no idea how much they cost. It was a building with a concierge and gym in the basement.’

Kennedy remains furious about the way he was ‘appallingly managed’ while undercover.

‘I would embark on a course of action and a cover story but what happened time and again is that I would get right up to the brink of either joining an illegal action or meeting some dangerous people and then would be told, “Hold on, we’re not sure you have the authority for this.” It was about saving their own skin so that if something went wrong they wouldn’t get blamed.’

He said the delays put him at constant risk of being exposed.

On another occasion, a vital campaigners’ instruction manual that Kennedy had obtained from someone at ‘the radical end of activism’ was shredded by mistake.

He said: ‘I went to Berlin in 2007 to meet some fairly serious people. They had been involved in some very dodgy stuff including trying to prevent a train carrying nuclear waste from reaching its destination. I had a meeting with one person who gave me a booklet. It was a highly prized asset. This booklet was a “how to” manual on building incendiary devices and derailing trains. It was definitely at the radical end of activism.

‘I was told this was one of only a handful of copies in existence. The person I met was connected with ex-members of the Red Army faction [more commonly known as the Baader Meinhoff Group].

‘I took it home to the UK and immediately gave it to my cover officer so it could be studied and copied. I told him I had to have it back within a few days. When I asked for it back a couple of days later there was a silence. He coughed and said, “I’m sorry it has been mistakenly shredded. It was left on a desk and a girl from the admin staff shredded it.”

‘I had to tell the activist that I had been stopped at customs and that they had found it and confiscated it, which seriously crashed my credibility and damaged all the hard work I’d done to infiltrate that particular group.’

Kennedy recalled how, while he lived in squats and ate food reclaimed from bins, his superiors enjoyed living it up. ‘There was one time when several of us from the NPOIU went for dinner. It was to this fancy Conran seafood restaurant near Tower Bridge. It was massively expensive.

‘I sat there thinking this is the life. The bill came to hundreds of pounds but then I had to go back to Nottingham to my activist “friends” and my vegan lifestyle.’

Kennedy, who has cut his hair and covers tattoos with long-sleeved shirts, is clearly struggling to return to ‘normal’ life.

He still lives in only the clothes he can carry in a small rucksack and when I offer to buy him a new T-shirt he chooses the most inexpensive, saying: ‘I can’t just turn capitalist overnight.’

As he prepares to return to Britain he admits he is frightened about what will happen to him next but says: ‘I am glad this has blown apart the world of undercover policing because it must change. I am coming home to face the music.’

Last night, in a statement, the NPOIU said: ‘There are several inquiries into all aspects of covert policing and as a result we feel it would be inappropriate to comment on these allegations.’

I made secret recordings with a £7,000 Casio watch

Kennedy used a specially modified Casio G Shock watch worth £7,000 and equipped with a microchip to record a meeting of activists prior to the planned raid on the Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station in 2009.

Kennedy said the meeting was recorded on a chip in the watch then the information was downloaded to a police computer. The tape was transcribed and Kennedy went through each line to note which activist was talking.

The court case concerning the raid was thrown out because taped evidence that would have cleared six activists due to stand trial was allegedly withheld by police.

Kennedy said: ‘I don’t know where those transcripts ended up. I did my bit. I sat in on the meeting and recorded it.’

Scared by a sinister email from old boss

Mark Kennedy last night told how he feels ‘frightened and scared’ after receiving an ‘intimidating’ email from his former boss.

The email came from a detective chief inspector – whose name is known to The Mail on Sunday but who has not been identified after a request from police – at the shadowy National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU). In it, the DCI says he is prepared to approach Kennedy’s elderly parents in order to reach him.

Speaking from the safe house in America where he has been in hiding, Kennedy told The Mail on Sunday: ‘I found the email sinister and intimidating and the part of it where he said he would contact my parents left me frightened and scared.

‘This is the most recent email from him but I had several earlier ones saying he wanted to meet with me. Those emails started at the beginning of this year. The DCI kept saying he wanted to meet with me for “risk assessment” purposes but when I asked him for an agenda of the points he wished to discuss he avoided answering.’

In the email sent last Wednesday, the DCI wrote: ‘If we have no response from you we are considering contacting your parents to request that they forward a letter on to you but we do not wish to cause them any worry or distress.’

Kennedy said: ‘Why would he even say anything about contacting my elderly parents when I did an interview with The Mail on Sunday last week when he could easily have called the newspaper and got a message through to me?

‘I also have Max Clifford fielding all sorts of book, film and media offers so the police could contact me through him. It is very worrying to me – particularly when there have been so many threatening messages posted about me on the internet – that the police would threaten to turn up on my parents’ doorstep when my mum and dad are already worried about me.

‘I have nothing to hide. But what is it that the police want to say to me that they cannot put in an email or tell The Mail on Sunday? It makes me very suspicious.’

Kennedy showed The Mail on Sunday another email sent last Saturday in which the DCI said he and another officer, Detective Chief Superintendent Adrian Tudway, had arrived in Cleveland, Ohio, to meet him in person.

Kennedy said: ‘I had told them I was planning to go to Cleveland to visit my brother but they never went to my brother’s house.

‘I didn’t get the email in time because it went to an account I am no longer checking regularly. But I would not wish to meet with anyone from the police unless they can give me a specific list of questions they want me to answer. I don’t trust the people I used to work for any more.’

In his email, the DCI says: ‘Let me get on the record and say what the purpose of the meeting is:

* ‘To gather information from you in order to enable;
* ‘An assessment of risk for your personal safety;
* ‘An assessment of risk for your immediate and extended family;
* ‘To assist in the assessment of risk to other Law Enforcement assets.’

Kennedy said: ‘I asked him to be more specific on several occasions but he would not be specific. He just kept sending me those same three points back. That makes me suspicious. I am shocked that two police officers flew to America because of me. I would like to know why. I find it foreboding and sinister that they won’t say why they need to see me in person.

‘If they want to have an honest and open conversation about what is going on then why can’t we speak on the phone?

‘If he’s worried about my safety and that of my family why can’t he talk about that on the phone?

‘If he wants to discuss other assets then I’d be prepared to discuss them too. I am now highly suspicious of anything the NPOIU does. I don’t trust them at all.”

An NPOIU source confirmed that two members of staff travelled to the US to discuss ‘risk assessment’ matters with Kennedy but were unable to make contact with him.

Squats gave me lice but I couldn’t see GP

Kennedy told how he was unable to get treatment for the lice he picked up in squats in Nottingham because as undercover operative Mark Stone he did not have an NHS number.

‘I never had a doctor,’ he said. ‘I got head lice twice from sleeping in squats. I felt totally and utterly disgusted. I was mortified. I couldn’t go to a doctor and I couldn’t use chemicals to get rid of them because of the life I was leading.

‘I was in a house with loads of people and any kind of chemicals were banned. I had to put coconut wax in my hair and keep combing the lice out. It took days to get rid of them.

‘Most of the camps I went to had poor toilet conditions, basically a hole in the ground. There were instances of extreme stomach upsets and dysentery.’

Kennedy would often drive other activists around in his police-funded van as he was not insured to drive other vehicles.

He said: ‘I was always an extremely careful driver but I was constantly frightened of crashing on the way back from an action. I would ask my cover officer, “What happens in the event of an accident?” He would tell me, “Don’t worry. We’ll deal with it if it happens.”

‘There was never any plan. If I questioned anything or tried to anticipate something going wrong I would just be told, “Don’t worry. We’ll deal with it.” I never felt secure.’

Kennedy revealed how he blew £5,000 of taxpayers’ money repairing his Nissan Navara pick-up truck.

He said: ‘The NPOIU bought this truck for about 7,500 quid. Two activists wanted to borrow my truck to go from Nottingham to Leeds. They didn’t check the oil and on the way up the engine seized up.

‘I couldn’t just go out and buy another van because I was supposed to be a money-challenged activist. So I had to take it and get a refurbished engine put in.

‘I told the activists my mum had lent me money. It cost five thousand quid to fix. Of course, my handlers wrote a cheque.’

Anger as merger of 'spy cop' squads lumps protestors in with terrorists

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

Police operations aimed at peaceful activists are to be merged with counter-terrorism in the wake of the undercover ‘spy cop’ scandal.

In a radical shake-up, the units that deal with so-called ‘domestic extremism’ are to be absorbed into Scotland Yard’s Counter Terrorism Command – including the National Public Order Intelligence Unit, of which Mark Kennedy and other recently exposed undercover officers were members.

The National Domestic Extremism Team and the National Extremism Tactical Co-ordination Unit will also come under the counter-terrorism umbrella, along with the National Community Tension Team, which monitors cohesion in inner cities.

All are currently run by the Association of Chief Police Officers.

Last night, campaigners reacted furiously to the move. Shami Chakrabarti, director of campaign group Liberty, said: ‘There are obvious risks in lumping vegetarians and jihadists together.

‘Policing divided communities in times of tension is hard enough without sending a signal, however inadvertent, that dissent or even disorder is viewed as terrorism.’

And Bradley Day, who was charged with planning to occupy the Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station in Nottinghamshire until the case was dropped after Mark Kennedy offered to help the defence, said the plans showed ‘absolute disdain for those who want to raise their voices’.

One police officer said: ‘At times of high political tension, the surveillance of potential terrorists might be weakened in order to monitor people who pose much less of a threat.’

The only way to prevent this ‘blurring’ of resources would be via ‘ring-fenced’ separate budgets and lines of command, officers said.

A Scotland Yard spokesman said that the details of how the units would be handled had yet to be worked out.

The plans will be finalised at a meeting of chief constables in London later this week.

‘This will be unsatisfactory for some,’ one chief constable said. ‘But at least bringing extremism into the Met will make it easier to achieve oversight.’

Briteistä 2007:

Spy within Peace movement exposed
http://undercurrentsvideo.blogspot.com/ ... posed.html

Photograph of Paul Mercer, Spy.
http://undercurrentsvideo.blogspot.com/ ... r-spy.html

Uudesta Seelannista 1980-luvun puolivälistä:

Ranskan salainen palvelu ("sosialistisen" Mitterandin alaisuudessa) solutti agenttejaan Greenpeaceen joka protestoi alueella Ranskan ydinasekokeita vastaan. Sitten toiset agentit asentivat pommin Greenpeacen laivaan, ja räjähdyksessä kuoli yksi aktivisti. Aiheesta on suomeksi kirja "Tapaus Rainbow Warrior", joka saatavilla monissa kirjastoissa (http://frank.kirjastot.fi)

Greenpeace kokoontui muistamaan Rainbow Warrior -iskua
http://www.karjalainen.fi/Karjalainen/U ... 43725.html

Greenpeacen veteraaniaktivistit kokoontuivat tänään muistamaan 25 vuotta sitten tapahtunutta Rainbow Warrior -aluksen räjäytystä. Ranskalaisagentit räjäyttivät aukon ympäristöaktivistien alukseen 10. heinäkuuta 1985 iskussa, jossa kuoli yksi miehistön jäsen.

Aluksen oli määrä suunnata Tyynelle valtamerelle vastustamaan Ranskan tekemiä ydinkokeita Mururoan atolleilla. Isku tapahtui Aucklandin satamassa Uudessa-Seelannissa.

Operaatio Saatanaksi nimetty isku osoittautui presidentti Francois Mitterrandin kauden suurimmaksi poliittiseksi ja diplomaattiseksi skandaaliksi. Ranska kielsi aluksi osallisuutensa iskuun mutta taipui myöhemmin tunnustamaan vastuunsa pommista.

Kaksi ranskalaisagenttia tuomittiin kymmenen vuoden vankeustuomioihin taposta. Ranska painosti Uutta-Seelantia kauppasaarrolla ja vaati agenttien luovutusta Ranskan Polynesiaan Tyynellämerellä. Uuden-Seelannin närkästykseksi Polynesiaan luovutetut agentit olivat takaisin Ranskassa jo kolme vuotta iskujen jälkeen.