Tory and Labour MPs ask DPP to clarify how police should handle intelligence-sharing allegations after Snowden documents raised questions about GCHQ role

A group of MPs is urging the director of public prosecutions to publish guidance for police and prosecutors on how to handle allegations that British spies shared intelligence that led to covert US drone strikes.

The Conservative David Davis and two Labour MPs are calling for Alison Saunders to clarify how to handle the cases, which some lawyers say could expose the agents involved to charges of accessory to murder.

The three MPs, members of the all-party parliamentary group on drones, write in a letter to Saunders: “We believe that there is some evidence that GCHQ may have used [the tracking of digital communications] to locate certain targets by US drone strikes in a country with which the UK has never been at war.”



The letter follows a report last month in the Guardian and New York Times revealing that documents provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden raise questions over the role of GCHQ agents in US extrajudicial drone strikes, including a 2012 attack in Yemen.

Davis added that it was time for Saunders “to consider and issue clear guidance on the law, policy and procedure concerning the investigation of complicity into extraterritorial targeted killing”. He said: “The policy vacuum we have at the moment is neither judicial, wise nor democratically accountable.”

The Tory backbencher signed the letter, along with Labour’s David Anderson and Richard Burgon. They raise particular concerns over the deaths of British citizens in covert US strikes.

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, a non-profit reporting organisation, has recorded the deaths of eight Britons in such attacks. Two of these men, Bilal el-Berjawi and Mohamed Sakr, had been stripped of their British citizenship by the home secretary before their deaths in separate strikes in early 2012.

Burgon, who joined parliament as MP for Leeds East at the 2015 election, told the Guardian the parliamentary group was “considering a new inquiry into how the UK works with the US in relation to the use of drones”. The inquiry is expected to take place this autumn.

The MPs write that the Snowden documents “lend weight” to suggestions by human rights lawyers and campaigners that British agents may have been complicit in the strikes. The MPs warn: “Without clear policy guidance from yourself, we believe that such activity may go unchecked.”



Last year, a legal opinion by Jemima Stratford QC, who also reviewed the Snowden documents for the Guardian, warned that this type of intelligence sharing could leave GCHQ agents vulnerable to legal action, including even prosecution as accessory to murder.



Writing to the DPP is an unusual step for MPs to take. Police investigations into the actions of British intelligence agencies are extremely rare, although not unheard of: MI5 and MI6 agents have been investigated over allegations of complicity in torture and rendition, although none has yet been charged.



The letter comes after numerous calls by MPs and others for the government to come clean over whether it does share such intelligence, and the types of guidance available to British spies on how to share the information.



The government has consistently declined to clarify whether its spy agencies share intelligence in circumstances where it could be used for extrajudicial strikes.



When approached by the Guardian with the information contained in the Snowden documents, a Downing Street spokesman said: “It is the longstanding policy of successive UK governments not to comment on intelligence operations. We expect all states concerned to act in accordance with international law and take all feasible precautions to avoid civilian casualties when conducting any form of military or counter-terrorist operations.”

But there has been growing pressure on the government in the past 18 months to disclose whether it does share such intelligence, and what policies are in place to protect British spies from possible legal action.

In December 2013, the UN’s special rapporteur on counter-terrorism, Ben Emmerson, told the parliamentary group that UK and US spying agencies were so tightly linked that it was inevitable that such intelligence sharing took place.

Last November, Sir David Omand, a former director of GCHQ, co-signed a letter, along with Davis and Labour MP Tom Watson, among others, calling on the Foreign Office to publish the guidance for British spies on intelligence sharing where it may lead to lethal targeting away from traditional battlefields.

Following the Guardian’s article, Admiral Lord West, a former security minister under Labour and former head of the Royal Navy, again called for the guidance to be published, saying the current lack of transparency leaves agents on “hazy ground”.