Only reporter convicted in £20m witch hunt cleared
A £20MILLION police probe described as a witch-hunt against journalists ended in failure yesterday as the only reporter convicted of paying public officials was cleared.
Sun crime reporter Anthony France was convicted in May last year of aiding and abetting an anti-terror police officer to commit misconduct in a public office.
But yesterday, judges in the Court of Appeal overturned the decision and said that a retrial of the 42-yearold was ‘not in the public interest’.
It will be seen as the final nail in the coffin of the police’s five-year investigation into payments to officials – named Operation Elveden, which cost taxpayers £20million, including almost £1million in police overtime.
The appeal judgment means Scotland Yard officers failed to secure a single conviction against any of the 34 journalists and editors arrested as part of the largest investigation in British criminal history.
Critics said police and prosecutors had embarked on a politically motivated witch-hunt against the Press.
Scotland Yard justified the investigation by suggesting News International, The Sun’s publisher, was to blame after it released confidential emails showing journalists’ sources.
But open justice campaigner and former MP John Hemming said the Metropolitan Police went ‘on a search and destroy mission’.
Dominic Ponsford, editor of the Press Gazette trade journal, added: ‘Most juries did not understand why journalists pursuing stories were being treated like criminals.’
Free speech campaigner Mick Hume said Operation Elveden was ‘the biggest witch-hunt against British journalists in memory’. During Acquitted: The Sun’s Anthony France
‘It was a search and destroy mission’
the probe, Scotland Yard chief Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe piled resources into the operation, even though his force cut £389.5million from its budget from 2011 to 2013.
But it began to unravel in April 2015 when former News of the World reporter Lucy Panton was cleared on appeal after a judge ruled that for journalists to be convicted it had to be proven that the stories they had written harmed the public interest.
Nine other journalists had cases against them dropped in the wake of that decision, but the prosecution of Mr France continued to trial.
He received a suspended 18-month jail sentence after being convicted of having a ‘corrupt’ relationship with PC Timothy Edwards, who sold him 38 stories for £22,000.
But yesterday Lady Justice Hallett announced that the conviction was unsafe because the judge in his original trial should have given more detailed directions to the jury in the light of the Panton ruling.
Yesterday, the Met said: ‘News International chose to disclose its sources to the police, and having received what appeared to be prima facie evidence that crimes had been committed, by public officials and potentially by those involved in paying them, we were duty-bound to investigate.’