John Jordan seeks explanation of why his conviction will be quashed after claims undercover officer gave false evidence

This article is more than 6 years old

This article is more than 6 years old

Prosecutors are due on Monday to defend their decision to keep secret the cause of a miscarriage of justice involving an undercover police officer who allegedly used his fictitious identity in a criminal trial to conceal his covert work.

The conviction of an environmental campaigner, John Jordan, for assaulting a police officer is to be overturned after it was revealed that one of his co-defendants was an undercover policeman who allegedly gave false evidence on oath during his prosecution.

The undercover spy, whose real name is Jim Boyling, was pretending to be an ardent environmental campaigner when he was prosecuted, alongside Jordan, following disorder at a protest.

Legal documents suggest that Boyling maintained his fake persona of an east London cleaner throughout the prosecution from the moment he was arrested, even when he gave evidence on oath in court.

His real role was only revealed 14 years later, when campaigners discovered that he had been sent to infiltrate environmental and animal rights groups for five years.

Following the disclosures, prosecutors have conceded that Jordan's conviction should be quashed, but have refused to explain why.

On Monday, at Southwark crown court in London, lawyers for Jordan will argue that he has a right to be told why he has been belatedly acquitted.

Three media organisations – the Guardian, BBC's Newsnight and the Press Association – will also argue that there is a strong public interest in revealing the explanation.

The number of campaigners who have been wrongly convicted or prosecuted as a result of undercover police operations rose to 56 last week.

Last Tuesday, the lord chief justice, Lord Thomas, acquitted a group of 29 protesters who had been convicted after blocking a train carrying coal from going into the Drax power station in North Yorkshire.

Thomas had demanded during the hearing that prosecutors give the acquitted group, and the public, a full explanation of why they had been cleared. He ruled that crucial evidence collected by a police spy, Mark Kennedy, had been concealed from the campaigners at their original trial.

Peter Francis, a former undercover officer who infiltrated anti-racist campaigners for four years, has said that on occasions, police managers authorised undercover officers to be prosecuted under their fake identities as it helped to foster their credibility among the activists they were infiltrating.

One undercover officer, Bob Lambert, who posed as a leftwing campaigner for five years, has admitted that he appeared as his alter ego in court in 1986 after being charged with a public order offence in order to "maintain cover".

The controversy over the acquittal of Jordan dates back to 1996, when he and Boyling were among a group of campaigners who cycled slowly around Trafalgar Square to stop traffic in support of striking Tube workers.

At the time, Boyling, a member of a covert Scotland Yard unit known as the Special Demonstration Squad, had for more than a year been infiltrating campaigners, masquerading as Jim Sutton, a cleaner from east London.

They were arrested after occupying the nearby office of the chairman of London Transport and unfurling a protest banner from the window.

Boyling was taken to a police station where he gave his name as Jim Sutton and, along with other protesters, was charged with breaking the Public Order Act.

He and other protesters were represented by the same civil liberties law firm, Bindmans, as they held confidential legal discussions on how to defend themselves, leading to accusations that the police have broken the defendants' fundamental right to hold legally protected consultations with their lawyers.

During a three-day hearing at Horseferry Road magistrates court in London in 1997, Boyling allegedly went into the witness box where he swore under oath that he was Jim Sutton and, as one of the campaigners accused of disorderly behaviour, was questioned by barristers for the prosecution and defence.

Jordan was convicted and given a conditional discharge for a year. Boyling and the other protesters were acquitted.

The police did not disclose Boyling's true identity to the defendants or the public. Boyling continued his undercover deployment until 2000 and had three relationships with activists. He later married one of them and had two children.

In 2011, his by then ex-wife and campaigners revealed his covert work and his alleged deception in court.

After an appeal, the Criminal Cases Review Commission, the official agency that investigates miscarriages of justice, recommended last summer that Jordan's conviction should be examined again in a court hearing, but said the reasons were too sensitive to be disclosed to him or the public.