Babar Ahmed - Monitoring of MP Visit To Ahmad

Monitoring of MP Visit To Ahmad

On 3 February 2008, The Sunday Times newspaper reported in 2008 that UK anti-terrorist police had covertly bugged prison visits between Babar Ahmad and his local MP, Sadiq Khan, Member of Parliament for Tooting. The bugged conversations took place at HM Prison Woodhill in May 2005 and June 2006.

This information was reportedly leaked to the press by Detective Constable Mark Kearney, the police intelligence officer who conducted the covert surveillance of the visits, in alleged contravention of the Wilson Doctrine that banned Government surveillance of politicians in 1966.

Following widespread international media coverage of the revelation, the previous Secretary of State for Justice, Jack Straw MP, announced in Parliament the day after the article was published that he had asked a retired High Court judge, Sir Christopher Rose, to conduct an official inquiry into the affair.

The Rose Inquiry reported back to the House of Commons later in February 2008, stating that the police had done nothing wrong, causing some commentators to dismiss the report as a whitewash.

In June 2011, the Houses of Parliament Joint Committee on Human Rights urged the UK government to change the law so that Babar Ahmad’s perpetual threat of extradition is ended without further delay.