I was misled, says Operation Midland judge

THE district judge who issued the controversial search warrants during the disastrous Operation Midland investigation has suggested he was “misled” by police officers.

Howard Riddle, the former senior district judge and chief magistrate, said he had complete confidence in Sir Richard Henriques’s damning report, which concluded that the applications had been “obtained unlawfully”. Scotland Yard detectives applied for six warrants in February 2015, allowing them to raid the homes of Lord Bramall, Lord Brittan and Harvey Proctor.

Senior officers had claimed the searches were necessary to investigate extraordinary allegations made by Carl Beech, known then only as “Nick”, who claimed he was raped and tortured by high-profile figures in the 1970s and 1980s.

The applications stated that Beech had been “consistent” throughout his dealings with officers and that they believed what he was saying. But Beech was later exposed as a pathologi- cal liar and jailed for 18 years for perverting the course of justice and fraud.

In a damning review of the investigation, Sir Richard, a retired High Court judge, said the detectives involved in the searches had acted unlawfully, had misled Mr Riddle and should be investigated for perverting the course of justice.

Writing online for The Telegraph, Mr Riddle, who retired in 2016, said he supported Sir Richard’s findings, and

added that the police had also failed to follow standard disclosure proceedings when applying for the warrants.

He wrote: “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.”

Mr Riddle was also critical of the Met’s failure to disclose “undermining factors” in their application.

He said rather than fill in the section, the officers applying for the warrants had simply written N/A.

He wrote: “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 raids had a devastating impact on those accused and their families.

In his report Sir Richard said: “These searches should not have taken place. The warrants were obtained unlawfully. Nick’s credibility was very much in question and he had not been consistent … I am satisfied the senior magistrate was misled.”

An Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) report which was published on Monday and completely exonerated the officers involved, has been dismissed as a “whitewash”.