STF NA MÍDIA

"Notwithstanding the decision
made this afternoon it
should be noted that the application
for production orders
was made under the
Police and Criminal Evidence
Act (PACE), NOT the
Official Secrets Act (OSA).
"The Official Secrets Act
was only mentioned in the
application in relation to possible
offences in connection
with the officer from Operation
Weeting, who was arrested
on August 18 2011 on
suspicion of misconduct in a
public office relating to u-
nauthorised disclosure of
information. He remains on
bail and is suspended.
"Separately, the MPS remains
committed to the phone
hacking investigation under
Operation Weeting."The picture
painted by Met insiders
is that a relatively junior officer
took the decision to take
on the Guardian without consulting
his superiors, setting
off a calamitous chain of
events that saw the Met condemned
for an attempted
assault on press freedom.
Police sources said the senior
investigating officer who was
inquiring into whether a
member of the Weeting team
had leaked information had
taken the decision to seek the
production order on his own.
The senior source said that
not even Deputy Assistant
Commissioner Mark Simmons
had been told about the
decision in advance. Simmons
is the head of professionalism
issues at Scotland
Yard and is seen as a rising
star within the force.
The senior source said: "There
was not a lot of happy
people at our place over the
weekend because it was a
decision made by the SIO.
There was no referral upwards,
and you would have
thought on something as sensitive
as this there would
have been." Simmons and the
incoming commissioner,
Bernard Hogan-Howe, did
discuss the issue, as the criticism
grew, but the source
said the commissioner had
left it to Simmons to take the
decision, and that there was
no instruction or directive.
The Met stressed that Hogan-
Howe, despite being in charge
of professional standards
as deputy commissioner, was
not involved in the original
decision to seek a production
order. Simmons took the
decision to review the application
by the SIO.
Geoffrey Robertson QC said:
"This is a victory for common
sense and freedom of
speech. Had the police continued
with this ill-considered
action, journalists might have
been forced to disobey a
court order so as to protect
their source.
"Putting journalists into that
dilemma and possibly in jail
would only bring discredit on
police and the law. It should
now be accepted that journalists
are entitled to protect
their sources of information,
otherwise that information
will dry up and there will be
less public interest information,
such as the hacking of
Milly Dowler"s phone." The
Met"s move had been condemned
by all Britain"s major
newspapers, including the
Times and Sunday Times,
and the Daily Mail"s columnist
Richard Littlejohn.Isabella
Sankey, director
of policy for Liberty,
said: "
"It would have been perverse
in the extreme for early prosecutions
in the phonehacking
scandal to be against
those who blew it open rather
than those who covered it up.
"We hope that editors and
journalists never forget how
important human rights are
to a free press."
Michelle Stanistreet, general
secretary of the National U-
nion of Journalists, said: "We
are delighted that common
sense has prevailed and the
Met has woken up to the fact
that they cannot get away
with such flagrant abuse of
the Official Secrets Act.This
was an outrageous attack on
a central tenet of journalism
– the protection of our sources.
This is a victory for
journalism, democracy and
press freedom."
The Yard pursued its action
against the Guardian without
consulting the CPS, until
Monday, or the attorneygeneral
Dominic Grieve.
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