BUGGERS
Did The Daily Mail Bug the Family of Stephen Lawrence?
A NOTORIOUS private investigator says he spied on the family of murdered black teenager Stephen Lawrence in a “dirty tricks” operation paid for by the Daily Mail newspaper.
Jonathan Rees told The Upsetter he was part of a group of private investigators and ex-special forces soldiers who bugged a cafe where Doreen Lawrence, Stephen’s mother, met to discuss the police’s failure to investigate her son’s racist murder.
Stephen was stabbed to death in southeast London in April 1993. There was no ‘wall of silence’ as the Metropolitan police immediately received the names of the white thugs said to be behind the killing.
But detectives botched surveillance and arrests leaving no forensics just the spectre of incompetence, racism, corruption and a looming legal action hanging over the force.
Rees sensationally claims that the Mail was sharing the intelligence gleaned from the bugging operation with the Met’s Special Branch.
“They thought Doreen Lawrence had a hidden agenda to undermine the police and [murder] inquiry and use it as an opportunity for black power type things, and they were bugging her.”
This was not an operation sanctioned by the Met, he said, but a case of a right-wing newspaper and the police sharing a common purpose.
“The police said we don’t want any part of it, but if anything interesting pops up please let us know … We were brought in to get whatever we could get on Doreen. And not just us there were other people involved, other investigators and it was an attack on the Lawrence family.”
Rees, who brought in the ex-special forces team to bug the cafe near the Lawrence home, also says he obtained the family’s phone records.
“We were asked to get the phone records of Doreen and Neville by another investigator that worked for the Mail. They asked my firm, who had the ability to get telephone print outs, because they think Doreen was passing on all the details about the murder to black pressure groups that could use it to undermine the police.”
These bombshell allegations, if proved, would leave the Mail open to accusations of the most cynical hypocrisy for bugging the Lawrence family, then throwing its weight behind their campaign for justice.
In February 1997, after the alleged bugging operation had wound down, the Mail controversially gave over its front page to branding the five prime suspects as ‘murderers’ and daring them to sue.
Today’s allegations have potential implications for the pugnacious editor behind that front page.
Paul Dacre stepped down as editor in 2018 after 26 years at the helm of the Mail, but remains editor in chief of DMG Media, the parent company owned by hereditary peer, Jonathan Harmsworth, the fourth Viscount Rothermere.
The Mail and its sister paper the Mail on Sunday have been the staunchest allies of Boris Johnson throughout the personal and political scandals that led to his resignation, following a night of the long knives, in July.
Dacre is tipped to be handed a peerage when Johnson’s resignation honours list is published after new prime minister Liz Truss takes over today.
The so-called Lavender list must be approved by a House of Lord appointments committee, who might choose to wait for a response from the newspaper to these latest allegations.
The Mail and Dacre have not responded to an extensive list of questions posed by The Upsetter one week ago.
Similarly, Neville and Doreen Lawrence, who are divorced, did not respond to separate requests for comment.
It is understood that Baroness Lawrence OBE has been aware of the bugging allegations for some months and made contact with the Mail through her long-standing lawyer, Imran Khan.
He, too, did not respond to questions, but sources say that Khan has been asking contacts one pertinent question: Is Jonathan Rees reliable?
