Journalists’ arrest in police ‘theft’ case is alarming for press freedom, court told
THE arrests of two journalists over “stolen” documents has “grave implications for press freedom”, a court was told yesterday.
David Davis, the Tory MP and former Brexit secretary, joined Trevor Birney and Barry Mccaffrey, two award-winning film makers, at Belfast High Court yesterday to support their legal challenge against the police.
The pair were arrested last year over the alleged theft of a police watchdog document that appeared in their film No Stone Unturned on the murders of six men in Loughinisland, Co Down, in 1994. They remain under police investigation and are on bail.
The 2017 film named the suspects it said were involved in the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) killings of six Catholic men who were gathered in a pub watching the Republic of Ireland play in the World Cup on television.
Mr Birney and Mr Mccaffrey are taking a judicial review against the execution of the police search warrant. Documents, computers, notebooks, files and digital material seized by police when they raided the offices of Fine Point, their film production company, were bagged and sealed after lawyers secured an interim injunction preventing detectives examining them pending the legal challenge.
Outside court, Mr Davis said that he travelled to Belfast because “press freedom is the most fundamental freedom in modern society, because it protects all the other freedoms”.
“Protecting press freedom is not just about protecting journalists, it is about protecting whistleblowers and witnesses, it is about protecting the ability to expose wrongdoing and failure and that is what these journalists are doing and they don’t deserve to go through what they are going through,” he added.
Police are investigating how information contained in a Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland document appeared in No Stone Unturned.
George Hamilton, chief constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland, citing a potential conflict of interest, asked Durham Constabulary to take on the inquiry following the film’s release.
No one has ever been convicted of the Loughinisland murders.
In a 2016 report, ombudsman Dr Michael Maguire concluded the security forces colluded with the UVF killers.
Mr Birney and Mr Mccaffrey have insisted the document was leaked anonymously and have criticised the police characterisation of it as a “theft”.
They have questioned why investigative resources are being diverted to their film when the Loughinisland killers have not been caught.
Opening the case, Barry Macdonald QC said police seized millions of documents. He claimed there was no risk to suspects named in the film since their names had been public for years.
“This was the kind of operation more associated with a police state than a liberal democracy,” he said. “It set off alarm bells because of the grave implications for freedom of the press.”