Murder Underlying the News of the World Scandal

 

 

 

 

 

 

This man is Jonathan Rees, a former Met officer and private detective jailed for trying to frame someone as an unreliable witness in divorce proceedings.  He was also suspected of a 20 year old axe murder – that of his partner back then, the body found in the car park of a South London pub.  Details at:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/mar/11/jonathan-rees-private-investigator-tabloid

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/mar/11/news-of-the-world-police-corruption?intcmp=239

The murder remains unsolved.  The CPS offered ‘no evidence’ after 19 months of legal wrangling.  The case raises some interesting issues on just what a ‘reliable witness’ is, given ‘supergrass’ evidence was intended to be presented.  On what I’ve read, I would not have been convinced by the ‘evidence’ and am more inclined to see it as yet more evidence that police and prosecution investigations need more active scrutiny than we give them.

Rees was caught out through the use of a wire put in his office – this in respect of framing the woman.  One has to wonder why this was not possible in 1987 when his partner Daniel Morgan was murdered, especially as both Rees and Morgan had been suspected of working with corrupt Met officers.

Rees may well be innocent of the Morgan murder and is calling for a public enquiry himself, as are Morgan’s relatives.  I’d call for one too, if I believed they weren’t just another part of the clown secrecy establishment’s white-wash weaponry.

In Stockwell, there blatant facts were first of dire cock up, then interference with the already laggardly IPCC along with the leaking of a pack of lies, then the cover up of officers being allowed to collude, the dumb story of shouting warnings that 17 members of the public didn’t hear – all not evidence of utter stupidity and lying, apparently – but never put to a real jury.  The Tomlinson evidence is again obvious and again there was severe reluctance to put it to a real jury.

In this case it appears a senior Met man has lied to Parliament and all sorts of assurances given by worthies are turning to dust.  Bent Met people seem all around as much as when I worked there before the alleged purge.  As ever, I see the police as no special case – there is now widespread corruption in politics, the press, finance and the law.  Everywhere there is self-regulation it fails.  By the time cops start trying to discredit people trying to get them to do their jobs and our courts turn evidence of innocence to that of guilt (Nico Bento) and what 17 people actually don’t hear is not good enough evidence that something was not shouted, it’s hardly surprising our Prime Minister hires a sleazy media magician.

There are ways to approach these matters without judges, public enquiries and the kind of stuff that eventually tells us a sexed up dossier wasn’t sexed up and that an ice cream cone in the possession of an Iraqi is a shaped-charge WMD; or that the Met is institutionally racist when the real problem was that some bimbo in uniform didn’t do what she could have for a poor guy who’d been stabbed.  Something is very rotten in the State of Denmark.  It’s a rotten orchard and we need a much wider focus than blaming individuals or cops.

What are we not getting while resources are wasted on 20 year old cases making fortunes for lawyers, what news do we not get as the Dirty Digger’s functionaries turn down the expenses scandal, and how corrupt are our politicians that they just have to be better at spin rather than tell the truth directly?  There is a bigger story we are blind to as this muck unfolds.  Why is our Parliament so quiet on how the very rich are getting richer?

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