Jury. THE Clive Ponting, Belgrano case.
plause.
heads of those responsible Stanley, Clive Ponting, Tam Dayell, leading up to the Belgrano.
government misleading' tional interest, government.
clearly took the and not moral or civic duty.
and came to their own conclusions.
ting the Tory government.
This was a truly government received a huge slap in the face with the jury's 'not guilty' verdict in the The result was greeted in the Old Bailey courtroom with gasps of surprise and then cheers of apOpposition MPs are demanding the Armed Forces Minister and Michael Heseltine, Defence Secretary.
Assistant Secretary at the Ministry of Detence, passed confidential documents to Labour MP concerning the events sinking of the Ponting maintained that he had acted out of principle to expose the which was "deliberately parliament over the true The civil service, he maintained, in the last analysis had to defend the naeven agalist The judge, Mr Justice McCowan, government's part throughout the trial. He made the legal ruling that 'duty' meant 'official duty The 'interests of the state' applied to the policies of the state - whichever government was in power, he told the The jury clearly disagreed with him They made a political verdict, indicamazing result given that 80 jurors had been vetted before the trial began and that all the names were checked by Scotland Yard has secrets - John the thing?). to ensure that none criminal records, and by the Special Branch to sift out those with extreme political views.
The government is now under increased pressure to scrap section 2 of the Official Secrets Act (why give Sarah Tisdall six months for doing a similar But also Margaret herself is vulnerable to the accusation of deceiving the House.
After all, as one commented, why go for the monkeys when you can get the organ grinder? of them had Thatcher political leader