There are calls for an inquiry into the conduct of a police spy after it emerged he had sexual relationships with several women during the seven years he spent infiltrating a ring of environmental activists.
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| Undercover: With his Tattoos, long hair and hat, Kennedy fitted in with the group of eco-activists |
Undercover police officer Mark Kennedy – who posed as Mark Stone – was welcomed into Earth First after approaching the green protesters at a ‘spiritual sanctuary’ on a farm in Yorkshire.
His work resulted in a high-profile trial which subsequently collapsed when it emerged he had crossed the line by organising and directing the very protests the police had hired him to help stamp out.
Now a woman has come forward to say her relationship with Kennedy had left her feeling violated after he was unmasked as a spy.
She told The Guardian Kennedy had relationships with several women and may have used sex as a tactic to gain intelligence.
She said: ‘In a general sense, there is a feeling that if somebody was being paid to have sex with me, that gives me a sense of having been violated.’
Following questions in parliament over the case, Cindy Butts, a member of the Met’s watchdog, has called for a review into the conduct and handling of the officer.
She said: ‘There should be guidance so officers remain focused on what they are doing.
‘I don’t think “by any means necessary” should be the modus operandi [for undercover officers] at all. There should be a review.
‘I expect questions on all aspects of this case, including these [sexual] allegations.’
The woman, who now lives abroad and wants to be known only as Anna, claims she had sex with married Kennedy more than 20 times.
She said: ‘I’m not sure personally if I would be willing to take part in an inquiry that touched on our sexual relationship.
‘If the Met knew that this was going on, then obviously they should reveal this. There should be an inquiry into whether this is legal.’
Using a fake passport supplied by his police handlers, Kennedy travelled to more than 22 countries posing as a committed green anarchist, while drawing a salary of £50,000 from the Metropolitan Police.
After his initial approach, during which he made clear he had money and a car to transport protesters to a series of high profile events being secretly planned, Kennedy was admitted to the group in August 2003.
Nicknamed ‘Flash’, on account of the bundle of cash he always had in his wallet, Kennedy stood no personal risk of arrest over any illegal activities – indeed he was relaying every detail of these activities to his superiors.
But the astonishing double life of PC Kennedy was this week blown wide open after a high-profile trial collapsed following allegations that ‘Flash’ crossed the line — and acted as an agent provocateur.
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| Unsuspecting: 'Mark Stone' spent seven years undercover with the group without any of them realising. The operation cost £2million |
The case against six people charged with conspiring to shut down the coal-fired Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station in Nottinghamshire in 2009 was dropped.
It came amid fears by the police and Crown Prosecution Service that the trial would expose sensitive details of the undercover operation.
And even more damagingly, defence lawyers claimed he was willing to give evidence in court for the protesters.
Last year, 114 activists, including PC Kennedy, were arrested when police raided a building. They were gathering at the Iona School in Sneinton, Nottingham, on the morning of Easter Monday, April 13, before they could shut down the nearby plant.
Mark Schwarz, representing the six accused activists, last night revealed the case was abandoned after he had requested further information on the role of PC Kennedy, saying prosecutors had opted to abandon the case rather than have ‘murky’ evidence about the police’s involvement heard in public.
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| Climbing the tower: Pc Mark Kennedy (circled) on a ladder as a banner is unfurled at Didcot Power Station |
Bizarrely, the undercover policeman is reportedly consumed with remorse over his ‘betrayal’ of his fellow activists — so much so he has resigned from the police and is said to be considering making a personal apology to those arrested.
Indeed, immediately after the arrest of the power station protesters, Stone was seen almost in tears at another activist’s house. Slumped on the stairs, his head in his hands, he apparently decided his infiltration had been ‘really wrong’.
He was this week reported to have contacted one close friend, telling him: ‘I’ll just say I’m sorry — for everything. It really hurts.’
Now in hiding abroad, Mark Kennedy’s bewildering case also prompted questions about whether he should ever have been selected for such a sensitive job, as police colleagues revealed he had ‘clearly gone native’.
In academic studies, undercover policemen often report identifying closely with their targets and can be overcome with remorse after spending long periods with those they ‘betray’ — a fact confirmed by Donnie Brasco, the famous undercover officer who infiltrated the Mafia and was tormented for years.
Dr Glenn Wilson, Visiting Professor of Psychology at Gresham College, said: ‘‘The only way they can do it (go under cover) effectively is immersing themselves and becoming part of the group they are spying on.
‘It is not a recipe for mental well-being, running two identities. It can be psychologically damaging while you maintain the deception — telling the truth is a much more straightforward process — and can create confusion in the individual as their personality is, in effect, split in two.’
In fact, soon after going undercover, the policeman became one of the most enthusiastic members of the anarchist movements, attending virtually every event across Europe, including trips to Iceland and Italy, and even training his fellow protesters for the Ratcliffe power station attack.
He helped gather 114 other anarchists at a private school and they planned to hit the power station at dawn. If they had succeeded in storming the power station, they could have shut down electricity to much of the East Midlands.
But, unknown to his supposed allies, ‘Flash’ had already tipped off police, who carried out a dawn raid on the school and arrested all the activists. Charges against ‘Mark Stone’ were later dropped.
Alex Long, a member of an anarchist group called the Wombles, this week reflected bitterly on how ‘Flash’ had duped them all.
‘He was too good to be true — the perfect activist. If he walked in now, I’d say to him “Mark, how you going?” and then only seconds later I’d think: ‘‘Oh, I forgot, you’re a cop,’’ ’ he said.
‘Flash’ was present — and agitating for direct action — at all the most controversial demonstrations in recent years, many of which descended into bloodshed and violence.
Dressed in his trademark jeans, T-shirt and fur ‘trapper’ hat, he was among those at the bloody G20 protests in April 2009, which led to the death of innocent bystander Ian Tomlinson as police and protesters clashed repeatedly.
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| Prosecutor Felicity Gerry told Judge John Milmo the Crown invited him to return not guilty verdicts for, from left, Oliver Knowles, Daniel Chivers, Brody Stevens, Anthony Mullen, Simon Lewis and Spencer Pawling |
Indeed, activists last night told the Mail ‘Flash’ also played a central role in protests at Heathrow airport, Kingsworth power station and in the hijacking of a coal train. To demonstrate his commitment to the cause, he risked his life to climb a crane and hang a banner from Didcot Power Station, which stated: ‘Climate crime!’
Increasingly part of the trusted inner circle, he was arrested for a series of minor offences at green climate camps — and once chained himself to the railing at a nuclear power station — but, mysteriously, was let off by the police.
By the middle of the last decade, his reputation was such that he was on first-name terms with an underground global network of anarchists.
Having spent seven years using taxpayers’ cash to help with these events, Kennedy even came to be regarded as the protest groups’ official driver.
‘We needed someone who could drive and someone we could trust,’ says Bradley Day, 23, one of the undercover officer’s fellow activists. ‘Mark felt like that kind of person.’
Stone earned more trust when he used his fake driving licence and passport — supplied when he was selected to go undercover in 2003 — to pay £778 for the hire of a 7.5 tonne truck to transport equipment for breaking into the Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station.
So who is the real Mark Kennedy? Now aged 41, he has a wife in London — as well as an unwitting girlfriend in Nottingham said to be ‘in tatters’ on discovering her supposed activist and mountaineer lover had been lying to her all along.
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| Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station: The trial of six protesters accused of trying to shut down the station for several days has been abandoned amid claims Mr Kennedy offered to give evidence on their behalf |
PC Kennedy was recruited by the Met’s National Police Order Intelligence Unit — set up in 1999 and now with an annual budget of £50 million and 70 staff — in 2002. He had left the police training college at Hendon in 1994.
A secretive police unit based at Scotland Yard, its officers are specially selected from other forces and are deployed to ‘perform an intelligence function in relation to politically-motivated disorder’.
But PC Kennedy’s big breakthrough came when he managed to stage his meeting with Earth First, amid a haze of cannabis smoke, at their farm camp in Yorkshire seven years ago.
Having made contact with his targets, and after discussions with his superiors, Kennedy began his full-time life as Mark Stone, a meat-eating anarchist whose wealth and regular disappearances made some others nervous.
Stone moved to Nottingham from his home in London so he could be close to other protesters, and secretly fed back information about planned protests. He attended training camps and clandestine meetings across Europe as he forged links with anti-power, animal rights and anti-roads activists.
Bradley Day, who was one of 20 protesters found guilty of conspiring to shut down the power station earlier this year, told the Mail he had never questioned the undercover officer’s dedication to the environmental cause, having seen the keen climber arrested a number of times.
‘He was always keen to provide practical help, both as a climber and driver,’ said Mr Day. ‘He wasn’t someone hiding in the corner, but someone who actively took part in organising these protests.
‘He was willing to trespass, he’d been arrested a number of times and he seemed like someone with an active conscience. The night we were released from custody, he took me for a pint and told me how upset he was that we had failed. We never suspected a thing.’
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| PC Kennedy: Recruited by the Met's National Police Order Intelligence Unit in 2002 |
He added that ‘Mark Stone’ had been a key player in the power station plan from the beginning.
‘He carried out reconnaissance and drove us round the power station, showing us all the good footpaths to use. At that point, the police must have known about the shutdown as, presumably, he told them.’
Of course, fellow activists now say they were always suspicious about his ready money and expensive cars — not to mention his frequent unexplained disappearances to London (where he would spend as much time as possible with his wife, who is understood to have known bare details of the operation).
Some activists say they dubbed him Detective Stone, as their doubts about him crystallised, claiming he did nothing to prevent them taking more and more risks in pursuit of the ‘green cause’.
But the policeman’s betrayal has also provoked fury among many former anarchists. Internet sites were bombarded with expletive-filled messages, denouncing ‘Flash’ — and members of his family — in the vilest terms. One raged: ‘Oh, Mark! WHY!? We shared a particularly brotherly experience once . . . or so I thought. It’s actually worse than someone dying, in many ways — I’m really angry as well as mourning for a lost friend.’
Another said: ‘This guy, Mark Stone, was involved in many movements recently. He was at Animal Rights gatherings, UK and international in Italy, connected with anti-fascism and environmentalism . . . please pass this information on to anyone who may have been in contact with Mark in the last decade, both in the UK and abroad.’
Not surprisingly, the disclosures of the policeman’s role in the collapse of the trial have also prompted political outrage. Not least because the cost of Mark’s seven-year operation is estimated at more than £2 million.
Senior Labour backbencher David Winnick called for Home Secretary Theresa May to make a statement to the House. He said: ‘The concern is not the fact that the Metropolitan Police, and possibly other police forces, use undercover agents. My concern is the manner in which it has been alleged that Kennedy acted almost as an agent provocateur.’
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| Critical: Green Party MP Caroline Lucas said the operation raises questions about the motivations of police and Government |
Caroline Lucas, MP for Brighton Pavilion and leader of the Green Party, also referred to the allegations over his role: ‘That the undercover officer here was an agent provocateur rather than a mere observer raises alarming questions about the intentions of the police and, ultimately, the Government. Such anti-democratic forces have no place in our society.’
Jenny Jones, a Green Party member of the Metropolitan Police Authority, said: ‘I will be asking the commissioner how many more Met officers are spending their lives embedded within environment groups and to publish the guidelines given to officers about the difference between collecting information and acting as an agent provocateur.’
Mark Stone’s secret life came to an end soon after the raid on the Nottingham school. Fellow anarchists confronted him after discovering a passport with his real identity on it. He admitted his role — then fled.
Now his whereabouts are a closely guarded secret. His e-mail addresses and mobile phone numbers have been deleted. His Facebook page has been de-activated.
Yet, incredibly, the lawyer for the freed activists this week revealed that PC Kennedy had agreed to offer evidence in support of the defendants rather than the police force.
‘He was willing to speak to me with a view to assisting the defence,’ said the lawyer. ‘We took the issues to the prosecution in the autumn of last year and asked them for information of his involvement.’
This week, Nottinghamshire Police referred the case to the Independent Police Complaints Commission, while the Metropolitan Police refused to discuss it.
But life may become even more fraught for ‘Flash’ from now on. Animal rights activists warned several years ago they will not tolerate any undercover police or private detectives found in their midst.
Not that many of former PC Kennedy’s woes will bring a tear to the eye of any former police colleagues. ‘He would have been privy to hundreds of bits of information,’ said one police source.
‘He will be looking over his shoulder for the rest of his life.’
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