A TRIBUNAL OF senior legal figures is to examine allegations that two investigative journalists were subject to covert surveillance by UK authorities.
The UK’s Investigatory Powers Tribunal is hearing a case brought by Northern Ireland based film makers Barry McCaffrey and Trevor Birney, who said outside court today they had come in the hopes of learning the truth about police conduct leading up to their arrests in 2018.
“Journalism isn’t a crime. Journalists shouldn’t be treated as criminals or as criminal suspects, and if that is the case, UK police have an awful lot to answer for,” the journalists said.
In 2018, McCaffrey and Birney rose to public prominence after they were controversially arrested as part of a police investigation into the alleged leaking of a confidential document that appeared in a documentary the men made on a Troubles massacre.
The PSNI, citing a conflict of interest, asked Durham Police to lead the investigation into the inclusion of the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland document in the No Stone Unturned film on the 1994 UVF massacre in Loughinisland, Co Down.
In August 2018, searches were carried out in conjunction with the Durham Constabulary on two homes and an office in Belfast based on suspicion of theft, with police seizing a number of documents and computer equipment.
The men were then questioned at Musgrave Police Station about the alleged theft, and were then released on bail.
Former PSNI chief constable Simon Byrne later unreservedly apologised for how the men had been treated and the PSNI agreed to pay £875,000 in damages to the journalists and the film company behind the documentary.
This settlement came after High Court judges in 2019 ruled the search warrants issued against the two men were “inappropriate” and recommended the seized materials be returned. Lord Chief Justice Morgan said the court had heard nothing to indicate the journalists had done anything wrong.
He said they had acted in a perfectly proper manner with a view to protecting their sources in a lawful way.
Also in 2019, Birney and McCaffrey lodged a complaint with the Investigatory Powers Tribunal asking it to establish whether there had been any unlawful surveillance of them.
The respondents in the case are the PSNI, Durham Police, MI5, the Security Service Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) and several government ministers.
In a two-day hearing at the Royal Courts of Justice in London, the tribunal will also probe a separate issue, predating the documentary, that involves claims police officers unlawfully accessed McCaffrey’s phone records.
McCaffrey had been investigating alleged police corruption around the time his data was said to have been accessed by the PSNI in 2013.
Outside court today, ahead of the hearing, the two men said they were “simply here to seek the truth”.
“We’re here to find out exactly what was going on in the years leading up to our arrest in 2018. We don’t know what we’re going to hear this morning. We don’t know how this is going to go,” said Birney.
“We don’t know if the PSNI and Durham (Constabulary) are going to come clean and tell us what actions they were taking against journalists in Belfast over the last 10 years.”
“We need the courts and the police to tell us exactly what they’ve done. Society needs to know that journalists aren’t being targeted by police.”
The two accomplished journalists had worked together on No Stone Unturned, a “chilling” documentary about the murders at a Loughinisland pub in 1994.
On 18 June of that year, people had gathered in a small pub The Heights Bar in the village of Loughinisland, Co Down to watch the Republic of Ireland play against Italy in the World Cup.
During that night, members of the loyalist paramilitary group the UVF burst in and opened fire, killing six civilians and wounding five. The group later claimed the attack was retaliation for the killing of UVF members.
No one has ever been charged with the killings.
Includes reporting by Press Association
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