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Drax campaigners have convictions quashed as authorities failed to reveal an undercover policeman had driven them to environmental protest | Drax campaigners have convictions quashed as authorities failed to reveal an undercover policeman had driven them to environmental protest |
(about 5 hours later) | |
Twenty-nine campaigners have had their convictions for ambushing a train in 2008 quashed because authorities kept it secret that an undercover policeman had driven them to the environmental protest. | Twenty-nine campaigners have had their convictions for ambushing a train in 2008 quashed because authorities kept it secret that an undercover policeman had driven them to the environmental protest. |
The train was taking fuel to Drax near Selby in North Yorkshire, | |
the largest coal-fired power station in Europe. Judges ruled there | |
had been a failure to pass over information that would have allowed | |
the activists to have a fair trial. | |
The undercover officer Mark Kennedy was the van driver taking | |
the campaigners to the demonstration. He kept notes that were | |
passed to senior officers via his handler – but police or | |
prosecutors kept them secret, Court of Appeal judges heard. | |
Lawyers for the defendants could have argued that the | |
demonstration might never have happened if it had not been for Mr | |
Kennedy, who infiltrated environmental groups for seven years. | |
During the protest coal was shovelled on to the track to stop | |
the train. It lasted 16 hours, and the clean-up cost Network Rail | |
£37,000. Participants were sentenced at Leeds Crown Court in 2009 | |
and 2010 for obstructing the railway. Some were ordered to do | |
unpaid work and others given conditional discharges. | |
Lord Chief Justice Lord Thomas said: “There was a complete | |
failure to make a disclosure fundamental to the defence … this | |
court has no alternative but to quash the convictions.” |