The murder conviction of a leading Chinese dissident and MI6 informant has been referred to the court of appeal after the Guardian uncovered evidence that was withheld by the police.

Wang Yam was convicted at the Old Bailey in 2009 of killing the reclusive author Allan Chappelow, 86, in his home in Hampstead, north London, after a trial during which his entire defence was heard in secret on the grounds of national security.

The Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) announced on Thursday that the murder conviction was being referred back to the courts because of new evidence “relating to the failure by police to reveal material which might have assisted the defence and undermined the prosecution case”.

The material relates to an incident which “first came to light as a result of an article that appeared in the Guardian newspaper in January 2014”, said the CCRC’s statement. “The incident arguably could have formed the basis for the defence to propose the existence of an alternative suspect.”

The case against Yam was that he had gained access to Chappelow’s letterbox from the street and had been defrauding him by stealing his bank details. The prosecution suggested Yam was confronted by Chappelow and had then killed him. He was jailed for life with a recommendation that he serve a minimum of 20 years.

Yam, who is in Whitemoor prison, Cambridgeshire, contacted the Guardian in 2013 with a letter that stated: “I believe the only way to my freedom is [to] let public … know what is my defence and what I had done in full picture. No cover-up … I was convicted for murder without even police have evidence that I know the deceased or ever met each other. There is no evidence to link me with the deceased ... and there are unknown DNA fingerprint footprint, all not belong to me.”

Part of Yam’s legal argument was that because his trial had not been reported fully, potential witnesses had not come forward. After the Guardian report on the case in January 2014, two witnesses did come forward.

One, a former close neighbour of Chappelow, told the Guardian that in 2007, when Yam was in custody, he was in his house when he heard a rustling on the porch. “I opened the door to find a man with a knife going through our post. He pointed the knife at me and I shut the door. He then shouted through the door that he had been watching our house and knew that I had a wife and baby.

“He said if I called the police he would kill them. He waited in the porch for half an hour. I hid in the house but did not call the police until he had left. The police showed a strange lack of interest and just told me to change all my bank accounts … It is clear to me that there was a violent person or gang operating in the street and the lack of police interest was very bizarre.”

The neighbour’s statement was passed to Yam’s legal team and formed part of their application to the CCRC.

“This case remains the only murder trial in the UK where the defence and other evidence was heard in secret – away from the scrutiny of the public and the press,” Yam’s solicitor, James Mullion, said.

“For the past nine years Mr Yam has been fighting to show his innocence, but has been restricted by court order to doing so behind locked doors. I and the rest of Wang Yam’s legal team are hugely grateful to the Guardian for staying with this case and uncovering the important new evidence.”

Yam’s barrister, Kirsty Brimelow QC, said she was delighted the case would be reconsidered.

The body of Chappelow, who had written two biographies of George Bernard Shaw, was found under a metre-high pile of papers in a room filled with rotting furniture in June 2006. It was unclear exactly when he had been killed.



Yam, who also lived in Hampstead, came to the attention of the police investigating the murder because, prior to and just after the death of Chappelow, use of stolen credit cards had been traced to him.

Wang had recently left the country for Switzerland, where he was arrested in Zug at the end of 2006. He was charged with murder and other offences. In a first trial, for which the jury all had to receive security clearance, he was convicted of the theft and fraud offences and jailed for four and a half years, but the jury could not agree on the murder charge. At a second trial he was convicted and jailed for life.

Wang had been a research assistant in the Chinese nuclear weapons research institute from 1984-87 and an associate professor at a university in Beijing. His grandfather had been Mao’s third in command, and his father was a Red Army general. He said he had been involved in the 1989 demonstrations in Tiananmen Square and, supposedly fearful of reprisals, left the country and travelled via Hong Kong to London, where he was swiftly granted refugee status in 1992.

He worked initially as a researcher at Imperial College London, and ran his own computer company, Quantum Electronics Corporation, from 1997 until it folded in 1999. At the time of the murder, he was deeply in debt and being evicted from his flat because of rent arrears.

The trial was remarkable in that the media were not allowed to hear the defence case. Jacqui Smith, the then Labour home secretary, and subsequently William Hague, then foreign secretary, signed “public interest immunity (PII) certificates” – demands for court gagging orders.

Hague claimed there would be “a real risk of serious harm to an important public interest” if Yam was allowed to disclose evidence heard in secret. Before the PIIs were granted it was reported that MI6 had requested secrecy, that Yam was a “low-level informant” for the intelligence services and that “part of his defence rested on his activities in that role”.

In 2014, one of Britain’s most senior legal figures entered the debate in an unconventional way. In an article for the London Review of Books, Lord Phillips, the first president of the supreme court, wrote that his daily cycle ride took him past Chappelow’s house. He recalled the murder and trial, adding: “Very unusually, a large part of his trial was held in camera, because apparently Wang Yam had some link with the security services, which he wished to rely on by way of defence.”

Phillips noted that Yam had applied to the European court of human rights, claiming that holding part of his trial in secret had infringed his right to a fair trial.

Yam’s lawyers tried to have the ban lifted by the ECHR. However, the original trial judge, Mr Justice Ouseley, ruled last year: “[The ECHR’s] judges and staff owe no allegiance to the crown. They do not apply UK domestic law. The various protected interests cannot be explained without risk of harm to those interests.” In December, the supreme court dismissed Yam’s appeal against this decision.

It also emerged last year that the prison service banned communications between Yam and Guardian reporters. Yam was told by Whitemoor prison authorities last year that a letter he wrote to the Guardian would not be sent. He was given a “correspondence memo”, stating: “Dear Mr Yam, unfortunately this correspondence cannot be sent as you are not permitted to correspond with journalists.” The Ministry of Justice said later that such a ban no longer exists.

