Priti Patel under fire for delaying publication of report into UK’s biggest unsolved murder
Home Secretary, Priti Patel, has come under fire for stopping the publication of a report into one of the most notorious unresolved murders in modern British history.
The Home Office argues Patel has a duty to “review” the report on Daniel Morgan’s murder on “national security” grounds before it is released to the public.
Morgan, who was a private detective, was killed with an axe in the car park of the Golden Lion pub in Sydenham, southeast London, in March 1987.
The unexpected delay has prompted Morgan’s family to accuse Patel of displaying “ignorance” and “unwarranted interference”.
Meanwhile, the chairperson of the panel investigating the case, Baroness O’Loan, has said the Home Office review of the report is “unnecessary and not consistent with the panel’s independence”.
In the 34 years since Morgan’s murder, there have been five police inquiries and an inquest into his killing, none of which has shed adequate light on the motivation for the murder or those who were involved.
The Home Office’s reluctance to release key information pertaining to the case was partially responsible for the collapse of a trial in 2011.
There have been consistent allegations over the past three decades that senior police officers were involved in Morgan’s murder as he was on the cusp of exposing police corruption just before his violent death.
Scotland Yard has previously admitted that corruption was a “debilitating factor” in the original investigation into the notorious murder.
The failed investigations prompted then Home Secretary – and future Prime Minister – Theresa May to order a review into Morgan’s murder back in 2013.
The review, which current Home Secretary Patel is reluctant to publish, reportedly contains a sizeable chapter on police officer’s alleged failings to properly investigate Morgan’s murder.
To make matters worse, the Home Office has unwittingly complicated matters further by insisting that Patel has to ensure the report complies with “national security” considerations.
The potential national security dimensions of Morgan’s murder indicates that forces above the police – and potentially the Security Service (MI5) – were somehow either complicit in the murder or its subsequent cover-up.
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