Damning VIP abuse report to be ‘ buried’ by Yard on US poll day
SCOTLAND Yard was last night accused of attempting to bury bad news as it plans to release a report into its disgraced VIP child sex abuse inquiry on the day of the US presidential election.
Operation Midland saw a number of high-profile people falsely accused of murder and rape by a suspected fantasist known as Nick.
A summary of the independent review into the inquiry is to be published on Tuesday, coinciding with the American vote.
The Met’s decision to make the report public during such a busy news period provoked a furious response last night following previous controversies about media manipulation.
In January, the force denied allegations that it had tried to deflect attention by announcing late on a Friday that ex-Army chief Lord Bramall, 92, had been cleared of Nick’s baseless claims of abuse.
And last month the force was embroiled in a censorship row after a senior officer said it would release only a summary of the abuse report – compiled by retired High Court judge Sir Richard Henriques – once it had considered whether it agreed with the findings.
Daniel Janner, whose late father, the Labour peer Lord Greville Janner, was the subject of false allegations by Nick, said: ‘ My family have been waiting for this report for months. It is absolutely disgusting that it is deliberately being released when the eyes of the country will be focused on the presidential election.
‘The police must be held to account for the way they treated elderly and seriously ill people like my late father who was dying of Alzheimer’s when they raided his home.’
Yesterday it was reported that Sir Richard has concluded the
‘Must be held to account’
force spent ‘too long’ pursuing Nick’s allegations against Lord Bramall, ex-Tory home secretary Leon Brittan and former prime minister Ted Heath, and ‘should have ended the inquiry sooner’.
The Guardian also claimed that ‘inconsistencies’ in the account of Nick ‘fatally flawed’ Operation Midland and Sir Richard’s report will criticise decisions and actions by officers involved in the investigation.
Operation Midland, which cost more than £2million, ended in March after the Met concluded there was insufficient evidence to charge anyone. The inquiry collapsed six months after the Mail exclusively revealed detectives had ‘grave doubts’ about Nick’s testimony.
Sources have told the Mail that Sir Richard ‘does not hold back’ in his criticism of the handling of Operation Midland, and senior officers fear the Met may face possible litigation from victims of Nick’s false allegations.