An activist has been awarded £230,000 in compensation after being duped into a relationship with an undercover police officer.
Environmental campaigner Kate Wilson met Mark Kennedy in Nottingham back in 2003. Believing him to be a fellow green activist, the pair developed a relationship, before splitting up in 2005 when she moved to Spain.
Kennedy, using the moniker Mark Stone, had originally been sent to infiltrate the Sumac Centre and spy on activists as part of the Metropolitan Police's National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPIOU). He was also married, and it's now emerged that he had sexual relationships with up to 10 other women during his deployment.
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On Monday, January 24, the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) ordered the Met and the National Police Chiefs Council (NPCC) to pay £229,471.96 to Wilson 'by way of just satisfaction for the breaches' under the European Convention on Human Rights, BBC News reports.
In September last year, the tribunal said the case revealed 'disturbing and lamentable failings at the most fundamental levels', and the Met's claims that officers knew sexual relationships were banned were 'materially undermined by the sheer frequency with which [Kennedy] did conduct sexual relationships without either questions being asked or action being taken by senior officers'.
Wilson also came into contact with around half a dozen other undercover officers from the NPIOU or its 'sister unit', the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS). However, the Met and NPCC denied any other personnel knew or suspected a sexual relationship between Wilson and Kennedy.
'We recognise the gravity of the judgment in this case, which outlined a series of serious failings that allowed Kennedy to remain deployed on a long-term undercover deployment without the appropriate level of supervision and oversight,' Helen Ball, the Met's assistant commissioner for professionalism, said.
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'In entering into a sexual relationship, Kennedy's actions went against the training and guidelines undercover officers received at the time. However, the tribunal found that the training was inadequate and more should have been done to consider the risks of male undercover officers forming relationships with women. We accept these findings.'
Wilson said the compensation wasn't about Kennedy's deception, but the Met denying her claims 'right up to the end'.
'The finding that these operations breached the rights to freedom of expression and assembly and were unlawful amounts to a long overdue recognition that spying on the protest movement is political policing and has no place in a democratic society,' she said in a statement.
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'It is important because it goes beyond the scandal of undercover officers deceiving women into intimate relationships. Violating our political rights was the entire reason for these deployments and thousands of people will have had their political rights violated in this way.'
The NPCC said there have been 'significant' changes to undercover policing this case first emerged.
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Topics: UK News
Cameron Frew