Ex-Tory MP Harvey Proctor accuses Met police chief over paedophile probe
|
Version 0 of 1. Harvey Proctor, a former Tory MP implicated in allegations of a murderous Westminster paedophile ring, has suggested that the Metropolitan police wants to postpone the collapse of the investigation until its commissioner, Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, has secured an extension of his contract. The former MP for Billericay believes that Operation Midland, which was sparked by extraordinary claims from a key witness known only as “Nick”, is being dragged out to avoid embarrassment at a sensitive time. Both the home secretary, Theresa May, and the London mayor, Boris Johnson, are in talks over extending the commissioner’s contract, which expires in September. When asked for comment, Scotland Yard said that it had a duty to “thoroughly investigate” claims of crimes in multiple locations. Last week, Proctor was informed in an email that an investigation into claims made by “Nick” about the involvement of Lord Bramall, the former head of the army, in a powerful paedophile ring was being dropped due to insufficient evidence. The email from the Met’s deputy assistant commissioner, Steve Rodhouse – who has previously had to apologise to Lord Brittan’s widow over the handling of a rape investigation implicating her husband – informed Proctor, however, that officers were continuing to investigate information relating to his case that had arisen since he was questioned last August. Proctor said the police appeared to be no closer to making an arrest, nor to finding the body of anyone said to have been killed by the alleged paedophile ring. He said this led him to believe there must be ulterior motives for the delay in closing the case against him, which he has described as a “homosexual witch-hunt”. Proctor, 69, who stood down as an MP in 1987, said: “Why have they dragged it out? In recent weeks it may have something to do with the fact that they know it is all nonsense and they are therefore going to manage how it all falls down. “If that was the case, I have noted that Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe has for some months been waiting for an extension of his contract for a further few years. I do not think that Hogan-Howe would wish Operation Midland to collapse before he is in receipt of his extension.” Proctor has been accused by “Nick” of participating in two murders and aiding in a third murder of young boys, along with numerous other claims of torture and rape. The former MP has called on Scotland Yard to arrest and charge him over the allegations, and allow him to clear his name, or drop the investigation. Proctor told the Observer that he also believed that Hogan-Howe “should apologise to Lord Bramall on his knees” for Scotland Yard’s conduct. “The Metropolitan police service launched Operation Midland on the basis that their witness was ‘credible and true’ and they declared him to be credible and true before they had any corroborative evidence. And the evidence they sought was not done in the normal way but by going on television and radio and appealing for victims to come forward, who they said would be believed. On the basis of that false policing they then, for over a year, kept getting it wrong,” said Proctor. |