MI5 court evidence while defending a violent neo-Nazi spy based on lies, report says | BBC News — Transcript

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1. 0:00A damning official report into the UK's
2. 0:03security intelligence agency MI5 has
3. 0:06found that it gave evidence based on
4. 0:09lies to three courts while defending a
5. 0:12violent neo-Nazi spy whose abuse was
6. 0:14uncovered by the BBC. The report by the
7. 0:17deputy investigatory powers
8. 0:19commissioner, Sir John Goldring, heavily
9. 0:21criticizes a series of senior MI5
10. 0:23figures and their organization. Our
11. 0:25investigations correspondent, Daniel De
12. 0:27Simone, has been covering the story and
13. 0:29told me that this was indeed a damning
14. 0:31report.
15. 0:32>> The report was commissioned by the Prime
16. 0:34Minister last year after we, the BBC,
17. 0:37showed that MI5 had lied to three
18. 0:38courts. They had brought a case against
19. 0:41me and the BBC four years ago to try and
20. 0:43stop our investigation into a violent
21. 0:46misogynist neo-Nazi agent who had used
22. 0:49his security service role as a tool of
23. 0:51coercion against a woman he was in a
24. 0:52relationship with. Um the government had
25. 0:54failed to stop our story, uh but in the
26. 0:57course of it, they gave false evidence
27. 0:58to the court. They didn't give false
28. 1:00evidence to two more courts in a case
29. 1:02that the woman brought against them. And
30. 1:05when we showed this last year, MI5
31. 1:09vehemently denied lying and two official
32. 1:12investigations took place commissioned
33. 1:14by the government and MI5 which absolved
34. 1:16them of any wrongdoing.
35. 1:18Uh they fell apart under scrutiny that
36. 1:20we provided to the court and the court
37. 1:23high court said it wasn't satisfied with
38. 1:25those explanations and that's what's led
39. 1:27to this official investigation. The
40. 1:29official investigation concludes that
41. 1:30lies were told. It says that a senior
42. 1:34MI5 officer repeatedly lied about what
43. 1:37had really happened and this is all
44. 1:39centered on whether they'd kept secret
45. 1:41the agent's status of the man or whether
46. 1:44they had told me about it when they were
47. 1:45trying to cover up for him. I showed
48. 1:47they had told me they'd lied about that
49. 1:50and this report says the senior MI5
50. 1:52officer lied and lied and lied again. He
51. 1:54fabricated to account and that formed
52. 1:57the basis of MI5's evidence. Another
53. 1:59senior MI5 officer misled his own
54. 2:02colleagues and also lied about what he
55. 2:05had been told. The senior MI5 officer
56. 2:08who gave the statement to the court also
57. 2:11was misleading in during internal MI5
58. 2:14meetings and as a whole it's incredibly
59. 2:16damning of multiple individuals and the
60. 2:18organization.
61. 2:20>> And the Home Secretary Suella Braverman
62. 2:21said that the findings of this report
63. 2:24are stark and that she is taking urgent
64. 2:26action to hold MI5 to account for these
65. 2:29failures.