Police illegally spied on journalists investigating Troubles massacre

Police officers unlawfully spied on two investigative journalists, a tribunal found yesterday in a landmark judgment.

- Haroon Siddique

The investigatory powers tribunal ruled that the Police Service of Northern Ireland must pay £4,000 each in damages to Trevor Birney and Barry McCaffrey. The pair were arrested in 2018 after they produced No Stone Unturned, a film about a notorious massacre during the Troubles.

The tribunal found that the Metropolitan police unlawfully put McCaffrey under surveillance in 2012, while the PSNI was found to have done so in 2013.

The tribunal quashed a 2018 direct surveillance authorisation (DSA), targeting the Belfast-based journalists on the same day they were arrested, as well as their suspected source. It is the first time it is believed to have taken such action. The case was also the first in which the tribunal has ordered a police force to pay damages to journalists for unlawful intrusion.

No Stone Unturned documented apparent collusion between the police and suspected murderers in the 1994 Loughinisland massacre, in which six Catholic men were killed by loyalist paramilitaries. The arrest of the journalists, over two leaked documents that appeared in the film, was ruled unlawful by Northern Ireland's top judge in 2019.