World

Ex-Spy Returns To Britain

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

August 21, 2000 / 11:03 AM EDT / CBS

After a three year exile in France, a former British spy who insists he had the right to leak intelligence information to the media, returned home Monday and was immediately arrested.

Police confronted David Shayler as he stepped off a ferry at the southeastern English port of Dover after making a high-profile crossing from the French port of Calais accompanied by reporters, TV crews and his girlfriend, Annie Machon. The unrepentant former spy was expected to be questioned at a London police station, then released on bail.

"He feels that he needs to come back and vindicate himself," an emotional Machon told reporters after saying goodbye to Shayler. She said it was "scandalous" that he should be arrested, because he had committed no crime.

David Shayler, 34, alleges that two highly-placed British intelligence officers ordered the assassination of Lyban leader Muammar Gadhaffi, an attack, he adds, which went wrong and Libyan civilians died as a result, reports CBS News Correspondent Tom Rivers.

He says it's a blatant example of civil servants following their own agendas, who are accountable to no one, not even the "elected" representatives in the government.

Shayler was arrested under the "official secrets act" in Britain, which could earn him a jail sentence of up to four years.But that's just the first battle in a war which could rock Britain's intelligence establishment to the core.

"The government has always misled and lied to the British people in my case, and I will be seeking disclosure of documents to prove that in any trial," Shayler said in an interview with British Broadcasting Corp. radio.

"In those circumstances, I think the government will drop the prosecution," he added.

Shayler, who worked for MI5, Britain's internal security agency, from 1994 until 1997, fled to France after selling stories to a British newspaper. He also had claimed that the agency kept files on a number of politicians, including the current home secretary, Jack Straw, and the Northern Ireland secretary, Peter Mandelson.

While living in exile, Shayler wrote a novel, The Organisation, which he described as "a gritty thriller about spies, sex and football."

He was required to submit a manuscript to the government to comply with a 1997 injunction barring him from disclosing any information he obtained while working for MI5. Last month, government censors accepted the manuscript unchanged, officials said.

Awaiting his arrival in Dover, Shayler's mother, Anne, said she was "quite emotional about the whole thing at the moment, just having him back in the country with his family.

"I'm very proud of him. My first reaction was, 'Someone had to do this but why does it have to be my son?'" she said.

Shayler spent four months in Paris' La Sante prison in 1998 after being arrested on a British warrant for breaking the Official Secrets Act. A French apeals court rejected an extradition bid.

In a separate civil suit filed last December by the British government, Shayler is accused of breach of copyright and breach of contract for releasing secret documents.

At a news conference in Calais on Sunday, Shayler said his decision to return home "should send a very strong signal to people that I have nothing to fear. I have done nothing wrong."

Shayler said Monday he hopes to use European human rights laws to challenge any charges against him.

"It's an absolute nonsense that in this day and age in Britain we have a law which makes it a crime to report a crime," he said.