Detective Chief superintendent David Cook (left) was allegedly under surveillance by News of the World during an investigation into the murder of private investigator Daniel Morgan (right)

Saturday, August 27, 2011

#Guradian warned #Cameron's people about #NOTW

Follow Daniels brother Alastair on twitter as he seeks justice for Daniels muder.

Follow ALASTAIR on twitter.... justice4daniel

Thursday, August 25, 2011

#Hackgate : The muder of #DanielMorgan

#DanielMorgan :The stench of corruption underlies the murder cover- up

by Simon Basketter

The hacking scandal continues to mire the Metropolitan Police, News International and prime minister David Cameron in filth.

New evidence is emerging that links the murder of private investigator Daniel Morgan in 1987 and News International.

It is now clear that Morgan was murdered a week after he revealed that he was taking allegations of police corruption to the News of the World (NotW).
A newly disclosed witness statement made to the police at the time said Morgan was going to sell a story to Alex Marunchak—then NotW crime editor. It appears that Morgan was offered £40,000 for the story.

But the claim was not investigated, and Marunchak denies ever meeting him.
Morgan carried out investigations for Southern Investigations, an agency that ran a number of dodgy information gathering activities for various newspapers—especially the NotW.

This new evidence links NotW to the agency from as early as 1987—far before previous revelations.

Tom Watson MP is now calling for the murder case—investigated five times by the Metropolitan Police—to form part of the government inquiry into phone hacking.

The unsolved killing is Britain’s most investigated murder. The evidence boxes in Scotland Yard emit a stench of police corruption reaching to the highest levels.

After the latest attempt to bring the case to court was dismissed, the Met admitted corruption and a cover-up in their ranks.

They said, “This current investigation has identified, ever more clearly, how the initial inquiry failed the family and wider public. It is quite apparent that police corruption was a debilitating factor in that investigation. This was wholly unacceptable.”

Jonathan Rees—Morgan’s business partner at Southern Investigations at the time of his murder—was one of five suspects in his killing. Rees was acquitted when the trial collapsed earlier this year.

Serving

Despite having served a seven-year sentence for attempting to pervert the course of justice, Rees was rehired by Andy Coulson in 2005—while he was editor of NotW.

Coulson resigned as editor in 2007 and went on to become chief spin doctor for Tory prime minister David Cameron.

In January 2007 Clive Goodman, former NotW royal editor, was convicted in relation to illegal phone hacking.

Coulson has repeatedly argued that he knew nothing about the case.
It has also emerged in recent weeks that Marunchak was employed by the Metropolitan Police as an interpreter with access to highly sensitive police data between 1980 and 2000.

In March, BBC’s Panorama programme alleged Marunchak, who worked for the NotW in Ireland between 1996 and 2006, hired a specialist to plant spying software on the computer of military intelligence agent Ian Hurst.

Daniel Morgan’s brother, Alastair Morgan, said, “What I know is that Daniel was concerned about police corruption before he was murdered.”

He told Socialist Worker, “We’re delighted to have Tom Watson’s support. We’ve also sent in a submission to the home secretary calling for a judicial inquiry and we’re hoping to meet her fairly soon to discuss this.”

A number of questions remain regarding Daniel’s murder. Was there a witness statement to police in the original inquiry saying that Daniel was about to sell a story to Marunchak at NotW alleging police corruption?

And if so, why did the police not contact Marunchak?

http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=25767

#Hackgate #DanielMorgan axe muder connected to Murdoch Mafia hacking scandal !

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

#DanielMorgan :#hackgate Murder detective put under witness protection...

A DETECTIVE investigating the murder of Welsh private eye Daniel Morgan was put under witness protection when it emerged he was being spied on by the News of the World, we can reveal.

As previously reported in Wales on Sunday, the unsolved 1987 killing of Morgan, who was found with an axe in his head in a London pub car park, has become embroiled in the hackgate scandal.

Sources within the Met have accused the now defunct paper of trying to derail the case when it started watching the lead investigator in the case, Detective Chief Superintendent Dave Cook, in 2002.

Only last week, MP Tom Watson called for the case to form part of the Leveson inquiry into phone hacking after it was claimed Morgan was on the verge of contacting a paper – thought to be the News of the World – about police corruption at the time of his death.

Now Mr Cook’s wife Jacqui Hames has revealed the couple were put into a witness protection programme.

The former Crimewatch presenter, who lives in Surrey, said: “David started going late to work and taking the children to school and to nursery, and being more aware of what was going on than perhaps he would have been normally.
“When you start seeing vans around the house it raises awareness and is quite scary which is why the Met took it very seriously and put us under the umbrella of the witness protection department.

“They looked after us and put security around the house.” CCTV and alarms were fitted.

Jacqui added: “We had two officers allocated to us who kept in touch and we reported incidents to them.”

Once she called them after spotting a van at the end of her drive. A camera lens was sticking out the window.

“I’m a police officer myself on a career break,” she said.

“This was very much a car crash between my personal and professional life.” After police realised Dave Cook was being watched by the News of the World they hauled in editor Rebekah Brooks – then Rebekah Wade – to confront her.
She was told one of her senior journalists had been using photographers and vans leased to the paper to run surveillance on Cook.

The paper was said to have claimed it was investigating whether Mr Cook was having an affair with Jacqui, his Crimewatch co-presenter, even though they were actually married at the time.

Jacqui said: “We were put under witness protection for some months.
“Dave was involved right through in that inquiry, until March this year so the threat never really went away.

“You [know you are] aware of some things. But other things you’re not. It is quite difficult to say when it has stopped, because it has not really.”

This summer Jacqui and Dave were contacted by officers from Operation Weeting after their details were found in the notes of Glenn Mulcaire – the private detective jailed for six months after pleading guilty to phone hacking in 2007.

She said: “He had my mobile phone number, a lot of personnel details which had clearly come from a personnel file, which someone in the Met would have had to have given him.

“It’s really very distressing and I would like to know what was done with all this information.”

MP Tom Watson is now pressing for the case to form part of the Leveson inquiry into phone hacking.

Questions have been raised about the News of the World’s links to the case because Mr Morgan, 37, from Llanfrechfa, Cwmbran, had worked with private detective Jonathan Rees.

Rees – one of five suspects in the 1987 killing of Mr Morgan before he was acquitted when a trial collapsed earlier this year – is alleged to have had links with the paper and been paid for stories, despite having served a seven-year sentence for attempting to pervert the course of justice.

Daniel Morgan’s brother Alistair, a 62-year-old translator, admitted the case “has driven me mad and I have often lost the will to live”.

He added: “I haven’t got justice for Daniel.

“That was what I set out to do. It was one of two goals – to expose the police for corruption and get justice for my brother.

“I don’t think Daniel’s killers will ever be caught now.”

 

Thursday, August 18, 2011

#DanielMorgan:'A private investigator, found with an axe in his head, said he was taking a story exposing police corruption to the News of the World !

#DanielMorgan: #Hacking #Paedophiles and Murderers..


The sordid tale of phone hacking by Murdoch, News of the World and News International is only the tip of a very large iceberg.

Prime Ministers, High Court Judges and top ranking Policeman have all been victims of phone hacking, since the 1980's.

Huge dossiers have been compiled on the most influential people in our society, but for why ?

Information is Power !

But, what information will have been gathered on these powerful people ?

What would the information have been used for ?

And who are the information gatherers ?
Rupert Murdoch bought the News of the World in 1969.

He bought up other newspapers and businesses and his UK empire grew quickly.

As did his influence in British politics.
In the late 70's and early 80's, Murdoch engaged serving Metropolitan policemen to do his spying and dirty work for him.

The moonlighting policemen even set up a company called Southern Investigations.
The directors of the private investigation firm were Johnathon Rees and Daniel Morgan.

In 1987, Daniel Morgan began investigating rumours that Metropolitan Police officers were engaged in drug running and paedophilia.

Morgan believed that the criminality was at the very top of the Metropolitan Police force.
Morgan was found with an axe in his head outside the Golden Lion pub in Sydenham.

Johnathon Rees was suspected of the murder, along with other serving Met officers.
The murder was investigated by a DS Sidney Fillery, amongst others.

The case failed due to either incompetence or corruption by the Met Police.

DS Fillery, later joined Southern Investigations as a business partner !
Johnathon Rees, with Sidney Fillery, continued their spying business.

And cashing Murdoch's cheques for 'dirty deeds done not dirt cheap'.

Rees even crowed that "no-one pays like the News of the World".
Andy Coulson enjoyed the fruits of Rees work when he became editor of the News of the World.

Rees was finally jailed for fraud and planting false evidence at a crime scene.

Ex-Met, Sidney Fillery was busted for child pornography but escaped jail and put on a 3 year probation.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

#Danielmorgan:The targeting of Detective Super. David Cook...

Leading the hunt, Detective Chief Superintendent Dave Cook said: "We believe he was killed because he was about to expose a conspiracy to supply drugs, a criminal conspiracy involving a large amount of drugs.

"We think it was cocaine. We know that it was potentially a large scale drug distribution network that he was going to expose and he was killed because of that.

"We believe there was a link to police corruption. Mr Morgan's death was the obvious way to reduce the risk of it being exposed.


On Thursday, The Guardian reported that Mr. Muranchak had apparently agreed to allow the two murder suspects in the case  to use photographers and vans leased to the paper to spy on Detective Chief Superintendent David Cook, the lead detective.

The two men, private investigators named Jonathan Rees and Sid Fillery, were suspected of murdering their former partner, Daniel Morgan, who had been killed 15 years earlier. Their targeting of Mr. Cook included following him, his wife, and their children, trying to access his and his wife’s voice mail and obtaining personal details about him from police databases.




#TomWatson: More to Daniels murder than meets the eye !

#TomWatson: My letter to David #Cameron about the Danny Morgan murder investigation and the Leveson enquiry:

#Hackgate #DanielMorgan murder links to hacking..

Wednesday, August 17, 2011

#Justice4Daniel : Press release...

4.08.11 PRESS RELEASE

DANIEL MORGAN FAMILY CHALLENGE HOME SECRETARY
TO ORDER JUDICIAL INQUIRY INTO HIS MURDER

Lawyers acting for the family of Daniel Morgan have sent today to the Home Secretary a detailed submission setting out the grounds crying out for a judicial inquiry into the case.

The murder of Daniel – a private investigator found dead with an axe embedded in his head in South London in 1987 – has been the subject of five police investigations. None has resulted in any effective prosecution or trial of those responsible for the murder. An attempt to prosecute following the last investigation collapsed after 20 months of pre-trial hearings at the Old Bailey on 11 March 2011.

On 31 March 2011, Acting Met Commissioner Tim Godwin apologised personally to the Morgan family and acknowledged publicly that there had been a “repeated failure by the MPS over many years following Daniel’s murder to accept that corruption had played such a significant part in failing to bring those responsible to justice”. He added:


“We recognise that we have to take responsibility for the consequences of the repeated failure of the MPS over the years to confront the role played by police corruption in protecting those responsible for the murder from being brought to justice.”

Daniel’s brother Alastair said today:

“For almost a quarter of a century, my family has done everything possible to secure justice for Daniel and to expose police corruption. For much of this time, we have encountered stubborn obstruction and worse at the highest levels of the Metropolitan Police.

We have found an impotent police complaints system and met with inertia or worse on the part of successive governments. We have been failed utterly by all of the institutions designed to protect us. We have seen for ourselves a criminal justice system which has proved incapable of coming to terms with the murder or the subsequent criminality of those charged with enforcing the law.

In the midst of what is a tragic mess for my family, we recognise that those responsible for the most recent prosecution, police officers and lawyers alike, have done their utmost to redress the catastrophic failures of earlier investigations. Nevertheless, despite their best efforts, the fact remains that there has been no public scrutiny of the evidence available in relation to Daniel’s murder.

We find real significance in recent and continuing revelations around the News of the World affair in relation to the close relationships between NotW journalists, corrupt police officers and some of those charged with Daniel’s murder.

In that light, we call upon the Home Secretary now to order a full judicial inquiry into this sorry state of affairs. We consider that the material placed before her cries out for proper public scrutiny of the murder and its handling by the police and the prosecuting authorities over the years. We know she will need courage to ensure that there is such scrutiny - courage which we have found to be signally lacking in her predecessors.”

Contact
Alastair Morgan
020 7608 3124
07917 698 109
Twitter
@justice4daniel
@AlastairMorgan

http://www.justice4daniel.org/

#DanielMorgan : Inquiry into 24 year old axe murder...

Monday, August 15, 2011

#DanielMorgan:'Journalists have been stepping over Daniel’s body to look at behavioural aspects of Rupert Murdoch’s organisations'


15 August 2011

Last week the family of the victim of one of the UK's most notorious unsolved murders asked the Government for a public inquiry citing, among other things, new alleged links between corrupt police officers and journalists working for the News of the World.

Private detective Daniel Morgan was murdered with an axe in 1987. Despite five police investigations no-one has ever been brought to successfully prosecuted for this crime.

In March this year, Daniel Morgan's former business partner Jonathan Rees was one of three men acquitted of murdering him. Rees has worked extensively for national newspapers including the Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror and News of the World.

The Morgan family have said they want answers about a meeting which is alleged to have taken place between former News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks and Scotland Yard in 2002.

During a Commons debate last month, MP Tom Watson said Brooks was told at that alleged meeting that "News of the World staff were guilty of interference and party to using unlawful means to attempt to discredit a police officer and his wife".

Watson said: "Rebekah Brooks was told of actions by people whom she paid to expose and discredit David Cook and his wife Jackie Haines, so that Mr Cook would be prevented from completing an investigation into a murder."

Press Gazette understand that the murder inquiry in question was that of Daniel Morgan.

This piece by Daniel's Brother Alastair was published in the May edition of Press Gazette magazine (before the latest Milly Dowler phone-hacking allegations)....read more


http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=6&storycode=47697&c=1

Wednesday, August 3, 2011

#Hackgate #DanielMorgan

Rebekah Brooks
Rebekah Brooks arriving at the Conservative Party Conference in Manchester, England in 2009. Photograph: Jon Super/AP
 
As editor of the News of the World Rebekah Brooks was confronted with evidence that her paper's resources had been used on behalf of two murder suspects to spy on the senior detective who was investigating their alleged crime.

Brooks was summoned to a meeting at Scotland Yard where she was told that one of her most senior journalists, Alex Marunchak, had apparently agreed to use photographers and vans leased to the paper to run surveillance on behalf of Jonathan Rees and Sid Fillery, two private investigators who were suspected of murdering another investigator, Daniel Morgan, when the latter was a partner of Rees's in the firm Southern Investigations. The Yard saw this as a possible attempt to pervert the course of justice.

Brooks was also told of evidence that Marunchak had a corrupt relationship with Rees, who had been earning up to £150,000 a year selling confidential data to the News of the World. Police told her that a former employee of Rees had given them a statement alleging that some of these payments were diverted to Marunchak, who had been able to pay off his credit card and pay his child's private school fees.

A Guardian investigation suggests that surveillance of Detective Chief Superintendent David Cook involved the News of the World physically following him and his young children, "blagging" his personal details from police databases, attempting to access his voicemail and that of his wife, and possibly sending a "Trojan horse" email in an attempt to steal information from his computer.

The targeting of Cook began following his appearance on BBC Crimewatch on 26 June 2002, when he appealed for information to solve the murder of Morgan, who had been found dead in south London 15 years earlier. Rees and Fillery were among the suspects.

The following day, Cook was warned by the Yard that they had picked up intelligence that Fillery had been in touch with Marunchak and that Marunchak agreed to "sort Cook out".

A few days later, Cook was contacted by Surrey police, where he had worked as a senior detective from 1996 to 2001, and was told that somebody claiming to work for the Inland Revenue had contacted their finance department, asking for Cook's home address so that they could send him a cheque with a tax refund.

 The finance department had been suspicious and refused to give out the information.

It is now known that at that time, the News of the World's investigator, Glenn Mulcaire, succeeded in obtaining Cook's home address, his internal payroll number at the Metropolitan police, his date of birth and figures for the amount that he and his wife were paying for their mortgage. All of this appears to have been blagged by Mulcaire from confidential databases, apparently including the Met's own records.

Mulcaire obtained the mobile phone number for Cook's wife and the password she used for her mobile phone account.

Paperwork in the possession of the Yard's Operation Weeting is believed to show that Mulcaire did this on the instructions of Greg Miskiw, the paper's assistant editor and a close friend of Marunchak.

About a week later, a van was seen parked outside Cook's home.

The following day, two vans were seen there.

 Both of them attempted to follow Cook as he took his two-year-old son to nursery. Cook alerted Scotland Yard, who sent a uniformed officer to stop one of the vans on the grounds that its rear brake light was broken.

The driver proved to be a photojournalist working for the News of the World. Both vans were leased to the paper.

During the same week, there were signs of an attempt to open letters which had been left in Cook's external postbox.

Scotland Yard chose not to mount a formal inquiry. Instead a senior press officer contacted Brooks to ask for an explanation.

She is understood to have told them they were investigating a report that Cook was having an affair with another officer, Jacqui Hames, the presenter of BBC Crimewatch.

Yard sources say they rejected this explanation, because Cook had been married to Hames for some years; the couple had two children, then aged two and five; and they had previously appeared together as a married couple in published stories."The story was complete rubbish," according to one source.

For four months, the Yard took no action, raising questions about whether they were willing to pursue what appeared to be an attempt to interfere with a murder inquiry.

However, in November 2002, at a press social event at Scotland Yard, Brooks was asked to come into a side room for a meeting.

She was confronted by Cook, his boss, Commander Andre Baker, and Dick Fedorcio, the head of media relations. According to a Yard source, Cook described the surveillance on his home and the apparent involvement of Marunchak, and evidence of Marunchak's suspect financial relationship with Rees. Brooks is said to have defended Marunchak on the grounds that he did his job well.

Scotland Yard took no further action, apparently reflecting the desire of Fedorcio, who has had a close working relationship with Brooks, to avoid unnecessary friction with the News of the World.

In March Marunchak was named by BBC Panorama as the News of the World executive who hired a specialist to plant a Trojan on the computer of a former British intelligence officer, Ian Hurst.

Rees and Fillery were eventually arrested and charged in relation to the murder of Morgan. Charges against both men were later dropped, although Rees was convicted of plotting to plant cocaine on a woman so that her ex-husband would get custody of their children, and Fillery was convicted of possessing indecent images of children.

Cook and his wife are believed to be preparing a legal action against the News of the World, Marunchak, Miskiw and Mulcaire. Operation Weeting is also understood to be investigating.

• This article was amended on 8 July 2011. Wording in the original suggested that at the time Daniel Morgan was murdered, Sid Fillery was among his partners in a private investigations firm. This has been corrected.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jul/06/news-of-the-world-rebekah-brooks