NICK: JUDGE No2 BLASTS POLICE
Officers misled me over search warrants, he says
THE former judge who granted police search warrants to raid the homes of VIPs falsely accused of sex abuse accused officers last night of misleading him.
Howard Riddle said detectives should have disclosed evidence that undermined the credibility of the man behind the claims.
The former district judge said officers had an obligation to reveal material that may ‘militate’ against a search warrant application. ‘A separate box is provided for this purpose,’ he said. ‘With these applications nothing was disclosed in that box. It was marked “N/A”.’
Mr Riddle added he had ‘complete confidence’ in a report by retired High Court judge Sir Richard Henriques slamming Operation Midland, the Scotland Yard inquiry into the far-fetched lies of the fantasist ‘Nick’, real name Carl Beech.
In his scathing 2016 dossier, released in full last Friday, Sir Richard identified 43 key blunders by detectives investigating Beech’s allegations.
Critically, he said Mr Riddle was ‘ misled’ by police when they applied in 2015 to search the homes of retired Armed Forces chief Lord Bramall, the widow of former home secretary Lord Brittan and ex-Tory MP Harvey Proctor.
Sir Richard said the warrants to search their homes were ‘obtained unlawfully’, adding: ‘The written applications stated that Nick’s account had remained consistent and he is felt to be a credible witness. Nick’s account had not been consistent throughout. The magistrate misled.’ In a further rebuke, he added: ‘All these undermining factors should have been brought to the attention of the district judge. None were.’
Yet despite this, the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) exonerated five key detectives of misconduct in Operation Midland inquiry, which ran for 16 months until March 2016.
The watchdog, led by former local council chief Michael Lockwood, has been condemned for its a report clearing the officers of misleading Mr Riddle.
In Monday’s Mail, Sir Richard attacked the ‘flawed’ IOPC inquiry, and accused the watchdog of ‘lack of knowledge of criminal procedure’ and highlighted ‘gross and inexcusable delays’.
Mr Riddle’s intervention is likely to prompt new calls for an investigation into the officers’ conduct.
It placed a question mark against the future of Mr Lockwood, who suggested yesterday that blundering Operation Midland officers were victims of a ‘witch-hunt’.
Mr Riddle’s statement – issued 24 hours after the IOPC ‘whitewash’ was published – is a blow to the authority of Met boss Cressida Dick, who is under growing pressure over her role overseeing the early stages of Midland and the force’s handling of the Nick scandal since paedophile Beech was jailed for 18 years in July.
In what amounted to a put-down of the IOPC’s findings, Mr Riddle backed the findings of Sir Richard’s report, which concluded he was ‘misled’ by Midland officers applying for search warrants.
He said: ‘It is central to recognise that those wrongly accused by Carl Beech have suffered a grave injustice, causing suffering to them and to their families. The allegations had to be investigated thoroughly, but sensitively and expeditiously.
‘Sir Richard concludes that I was correct in granting the warrants having regard to the information put before me. However, he identifies a number of undermining factors that should have been drawn to my attention, but were not. Had they been, the report states, “it is inconceivable... that any application for a warrant would have been granted”. The conclusion is that the search warrants were obtained unlawfully. It is obvious to me that Sir Richard has considered all the evidence put before him with great care. I have complete confidence in his report and its conclusions.
‘In the application form for a search warrant there is a written requirement to disclose undermining factors, that is information that may militate against the application. A separate box is provided for this purpose. With these applications nothing was disclosed in that box. It was marked “N/A”.
‘There is also a requirement... for a police investigator to record and retain material, including material which may undermine the prosecution case, and disclose it in due course. There is also a common law obligation on the police and prosecution to disclose this material to the defence.
‘It is notorious that this obligation is not always complied with...
‘In an investigation such as Operation Midland, it is right to expect that undermining factors would be recorded in a log or similar document from the beginning of the investigation and available to the officer making the search warrant application, and to the court.’
The IOPC inquiry began after the Met referred five officers who had been involved in Operation Midland to the police watchdog.
Four have retired, while the fifth, Steve Rodhouse, now has a £240,000 job at the National Crime Agency. He was cleared by the IOPC without being interviewed.
Yesterday, Labour peer Lord Campbell- Savours told peers: ‘Steve Rodhouse, director-general of operations at the National Crime Agency... is principally responsible for this disaster. Why isn’t he going to be sacked?’