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A Merseyside businessman who accused MI5 of an 11-year “campaign of harassment” says he has won the first round in a legal fight against the security services.

Wirral property developer Philip Kerr, a friend of drugs kingpin Curtis Warren, took Britain’s spooks to court over allegations he has been bugged and stalked.

His £500,000 legal action even claimed that spies had trained birds to tap on his window in attempts to intimidate him.

A judge this month refused to strike out the claim at the request of MI5, which said it would neither confirm nor deny the allegations, in line with procedure.

Senior Master Barbara Fontaine instead stayed – or suspended – the proceedings and told Mr Kerr to take his complaint to the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT), a closed court which investigates complaints of unlawful covert techniques by public authorities.

She said doing so would avoid the “considerable expense and use of court resources that will be required in these proceedings”.

Kerr’s barrister Anthony Barraclough told the ECHO: “This is the first time anyone has sued MI5 for an injunction to stop harassment and Mr Kerr was taken seriously and he won the first round.

“The proceedings were put on hold while he goes, if he wishes, to the IPT. If they investigate and make any rulings that MI5 do not obey, he can go back and reopen the High Court case.

“He has started and will not be stopped.

“MI5 are not pleased because they thought his claim would be thrown out and it’s only on hold.”

In the legal papers, seen by the ECHO, Kerr claimed that he has been approached by agents, who planted cameras and microphones in his various homes. They also, he claimed, interfered with his phones, television and radio.

Kerr claims he was approached by MI5 in 2003 when they were probing Warren, Britain’s most notorious drugs trafficker, and Liverpool crime lord Colin “Smigger” Smith – dubbed the ‘Cocaine King’.

Kerr, who was the victim of an underworld assassination attempt in London in 1992, says MI5 waged its campaign after he refused to provide intelligence on Smith, Warren and other gangland figures.

He previously told the ECHO: “My case simply is that I am being unlawfully harassed by the security services and I wish this harassment to stop.

“At first, I know it seems absurd. But I have witnesses to a lot of the strange things that have gone on.”

Summing up the background to the case, Senior Master Fontaine said: “The claimant alleges that he has been subject to harassment by the Security Service by a course of conduct from March 2002 to September 2014, comprising 149 incidents.

“He says that this course of conduct, which includes stalking and surveillance, has been carried out overtly, rather than covertly, by MI5 in order to persuade or force him by intimidation to work with the Security Service.

“He seeks only an injunction to prevent the Security Service from carrying out continued harassment in the manner in which he alleges it has been done, and not damages.”

Senior Master Fontaine said the High Court could reopen the case if M15 “did not comply” with any ruling from the IPT, which she described as a “more appropriate forum... readily available at much less cost”.