Report on killer kept secret – to protect his ‘right to privacy’
AN OFFICIAL report on a murderer who attacked a woman while on home leave will remain secret – to protect his right to privacy.
Robbie McIntosh, 32, battered grandmother Linda McDonald, 54, with a dumb-bell only five days after being released.
But prison chiefs cited ‘data protection’ during a Freedom Of Information (FOI) dispute with the Scottish Daily Mail to keep a report on his case under wraps.
It means the public will not be allowed to find out who decided to let the psychopath out – and what mistakes may have been made by jail bosses. Scottish Tory justice spokesman Liam Kerr said: ‘There is an obvious public interest in the report into this case and there can be no serious justification for not releasing it.
‘The tragic outcome of the case very obviously indicates that errors were made, but we don’t know any details.
‘Without the report, the public cannot know if lessons have been learned from these mistakes or if the Scottish Prison Service [SPS] is condemned to repeat them.’
The case sparked a political row in February after Mrs McDonald’s family condemned the fact that a ‘sick individual’ such as McIntosh could be considered for release – only to strike again.
Mrs McDonald was attacked by McIntosh in Dundee on an August afternoon last year.
At the High Court in Edinburgh last October, he admitted attempted murder. In February, at the High Court in Aberdeen, judge Lord Arthurson ordered him to be jailed for an ‘indeterminate’ period. He must serve at least five years before applying for parole.
McIntosh was given a life term for murder in 2002 after he killed Anne Nicoll, 34, in a cannabis-fuelled attack in Dundee. He was 15 at the time. He was granted home leave last summer ahead of a parole hearing – but attacked Mrs McDonald after five days.
The SPS carried out a critical incident review to establish if the correct procedures had been followed and if lessons could be learned. But it refused to hand over the findings, partly because other agencies involved were still conducting their own inquiries.
An initial FOI request was rejected in March. On appeal, SPS senior legal services manager Jim O’Neill repeated the refusal.
He said: ‘While I recognise there is some public interest in release, this is outweighed by the public interest in ensuring the significant case review is allowed to be undertaken without prejudice.’
He insisted the report was ‘biographical and concerns the management of Mr McIntosh’, so could not be released for data protection reasons.
The Mail then appealed to Scottish Information Commissioner Daren Fitzhenry. This week, he ruled: ‘There are no conditions which would allow the sensitive personal data to be disclosed.’
He added that releasing the information would be unlawful.
In February, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon rejected calls for a review of the policy of granting home leave to killers.
‘Errors made but we don’t know details’