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There have been a number of newspaper reports of about the appeal in R (A) v B. The hearing before the Supreme Court began yesterday and concludes today. The claimant is a former spy and the defendant is the security services “director of establishments”. A has written his memoirs, B wants to delete passages and the dispute concerns which court should decided between them.
In the Guardian, Richard Norton-Taylor suggests that the case has a significance that “goes way beyond the banal sobriquets of the two sides” and could, potentially expose intelligence agencies to a scrutiny that they have never had before. He reports that, according to the “Sunday Telegraph” the claimant “A” is
a former member of the special forces, who penetrated the IRA, organised crime gangs and more recently recruited agents to infiltrate jihadist groups plotting terror attacks in Britain.
Frances Gibb discusses the case in the Times reporting that yesterday’s hearing “failed to shed light on the secrets at the heart of the case”, reporting the submissions of Gavin Millar QC for the claimant and Lord Pannick QC for the interveners, JUSTICE (see our post yesterday)
The report from David Stringer of the Associated Press is widely carried in the media around the world – see, for example, the Edmonton Sun. He refers to the article by the claimant’s lawyer, Tamsin Allen of Bindmans, in Index on Censorship where she describes the book written by the claimant, a former agent, as “thoughtful and sensitive”
