The British court ordered, this Monday (24), that the police of the Greater London Region to pay 229 thousand pounds sterling (R$ 1.7 million) to an environmental activist who was deceived in a love relationship of more than a year. by an undercover police officer. The investigator was tasked with spying on her and spying on groups she supported.
The judges came to the conclusion that, with the operation, the police violated Kate Wilson’s human rights. At least 11 other women would have been victims of this method used by investigators, but she was the one who went the furthest with the process, according to the police themselves.
Wilson met then-undercover police officer Mark Kennedy in 2003, when he was posing as an environmental activist in Nottingham, 200 km from London. The two started a relationship in November of the same year and stayed together until February 2005, when the activist moved to Spain. The real identity of the investigator, who was married, however, would only have been discovered by her five years after the end. Subsequently, the British began a campaign to find out how she had been deceived and sued the State, alleging that her privacy had been violated.
Kennedy is believed to have spent seven years infiltrating environmental groups and, according to the BBC, he had sex with up to 10 other women during the mission. In all, the secret police operation spied on more than a thousand political groups, predominantly linked to the left, between the 1970s and 2010s.
In the decision, the three judges responsible for reviewing the case highlighted the responsibilities of superior officers in espionage. “Either they knew about the relationship or chose not to know about its existence or were incompetent and negligent in not following the obvious and clear signs [do relacionamento]”, they pointed out, according to the British newspaper The Guardian.
In September, during a hearing in the case, the same court had already concluded that the fact was not only about a “renegade policeman who took advantage of his secret mission”, but also about the authorizations, “which were flawed”.
The magistrates also praised what they called the activist’s “tenacity and perseverance” in processing the complaint. In most of the case, according to the British newspaper, she conducted the action alone, due to financial problems.
On Tuesday, Wilson told British media that “the discovery that these operations violated the rights to free speech amounts to a long overdue recognition that spying on activist groups is political policing and has no place in a democratic society.” . He added: “It’s important, because it goes beyond the scandal of undercover police deceiving women into intimate relationships. The violation of our political rights was the reason for these mobilizations and thousands of people had their political rights violated in this way.”
Metropolitan Policy recognized the gravity of the trial. “[O veredicto] outlined a series of serious flaws that allowed Kennedy to remain in a long-term undercover operation without the appropriate level of oversight,” said Helen Ball, the institution’s assistant commissioner. “This resulted in Wilson’s human rights being violated.”
The conduct of the undercover officers during the four decades of operation is being investigated in a public inquiry created in 2014 and led by a retired judge. The group is due to hold its next round of hearings in May.
