英潜入捜査官、正体偽り恋愛も…公式調査開始

【ロンドンＡＦＰ＝時事】主要8か国（G8）首脳会議（サミット）に反対する集会で出会った元恋人は、実在しない人物だった──英国在住のケイト・ウィルソンさん（42）は2010年、その事実を友人たちから知らされた。（写真は資料写真）
　マーク・ストーンと名乗っていた元恋人の本名は、マーク・ケネディー。妻も子どももいる、環境団体専門のベテラン潜入捜査官だったのだ。
　何十年も続けられてきた英警察の潜入捜査は論争の的になっていたが、今月ようやく公式な調査が始まった。環境団体に潜入するために他人になりすました捜査官らと、数年に及ぶ恋愛関係を持った被害者らは、捜査官らの活動が明らかにされることを願っている。
　看護師として働くウィルソンさんはＡＦＰの取材に対し「本当にひどい、言葉ではほとんど説明できない」と、自らのつらい体験を訴えた。
　もう一人の被害者リサさん（仮名）も、ケネディー捜査官と６年間恋愛関係にあった。だが、やはり２０１０年に捜査官の本物のパスポート（旅券）を偶然見つけて正体を知った。
　リサさんは被害者団体「Ｐｏｌｉｃｅ　Ｓｐｉｅｓ　Ｏｕｔ　ｏｆ　Ｌｉｖｅｓ（警察のスパイは人生から出ていけの意）」のウェブサイトに「彼はすべてを共有してきた相手だった」「父が亡くなった時に支えてくれたのは彼だった」と投稿した。
　同団体は、この問題を警察による「性的かつ精神的虐待」だと主張し、リサさんのような女性を支援するためにウェブサイトを立ち上げた。
　身分を隠した捜査官と恋に落ち、子どもまでもうけた女性もいる。覆面捜査官「ボブ・ロビンソン」は１９８４年、ジャッキーさんという若い女性と出会い、１年後には息子が生まれた。ジャッキーさんは、二人には動物好きという共通点があると信じていた。
　ところが息子が生まれた２年後、「ボブ」は警察に追われていると言って失踪した。実際には、内偵任務が完了したためだった。ジャッキーさんは２０１２年の新聞報道で、初めて「ボブ」の正体を知った。

■真実を求めて
　英メディアの報道によると、ロンドン警視庁が１９６８年にベトナム戦争反対運動を監視するために、いわゆる「特殊任務班」を設置して以降、少なくとも１３９人の捜査官が１０００以上の団体に潜入してきたという。
　潜入対象の大半は左派組織で、労働組合や環境団体、反人種差別や平和主義、フェミニズムを掲げる団体などだが、極右組織も対象とされた。
　潜入捜査被害者弁護団のまとめ役を担うリディア・ダゴスティーノ弁護士は、被害者の中には「ひどく傷つき、決して立ち直れない」女性もいると語った。
　警察は２０１５年、複数の女性に対し謝罪し、損害賠償を支払った。さらに今週、「捜査対象」との性交渉は現在は認められておらず、潜入捜査は「明確な倫理指針と法的枠組み」に基づいて行われていると述べた。
　だがケネディー捜査官と人生を共にしていたウィルソンさんにとって、この言葉は大した慰めにならない。
　ダゴスティーノ氏は、意図的な「感情操作」は潜入捜査官がよく使う手法だと述べ、本件では審理の傍聴やインターネット配信が認められていないことについて、「国家による隠蔽（いんぺい）工作」だと非難した。【翻訳編集ＡＦＰＢＢＮｅｗｓ】
〔ＡＦＰ＝時事〕（2020/11/10-12:19）

In 2010, friends told Kate Wilson that her ex-boyfriend and confidant Mark Stone, whom she met at an anti-G8 meeting, never existed.
He was in fact a British police officer, whose real name was Mark Kennedy. He had a wife and children and was a veteran infiltrator of environmental activist groups.
The controversial decades-long practice of Britain's spy police finally came under the spotlight as a public inquiry began last week after a five-year wait.
Victims hope it will lift the lid on officers who used stolen identities, including of dead children, and embarked on years-long romantic relationships to infiltrate activist groups.
It's absolutely awful, it's very, very difficult to describe, Wilson, a 42-year-old nurse, told AFP of her ordeal.
You have memories and you have an idea of your own life story and what relationships are, and it's totally destroyed.
Lisa, the pseudonym of another of Kennedy's victims who had been in a relationship with him for six years, also discovered his real identity in 2010 after stumbling upon his actual passport.
He'd been the person that I shared everything with, she wrote on the website of the group Police Spies Out of Lives.
He was the person who supported me after my father's death. He was the person I went on holiday with.
The website was set up to support women like Lisa who suffered what they said was sexual and psychological abuse at police hands. But her story is not unusual.
Undercover cop Bob Robinson had a son with Jacqui, a young woman who believed he shared her love of animals, a year after they met in 1984.
He disappeared two years later after his son was born, claiming he was being hunted by the police; in fact, he had just completed his mission.
Jacqui did not learn his true identity until a 2012 newspaper report.
- Seeking the truth -
Revelations about Britain's spy cops and their work have been accumulating over the last decade.
But it was only when Britain's most notorious racist murder case became implicated in the saga that it exploded into a full-blown scandal.
In 2013, former infiltrator Peter Francis said he had spied on the parents of Stephen Lawrence, a young black man killed by a white gang in London in 1993, in order to discredit them.
He said his operation was conducted after a public inquiry found the initial London Metropolitan Police probe into the killing was tainted by institutional racism.
Then interior minister, later prime minister Theresa May, established a public inquiry in 2015.
But as a result of years of delays due to the sensitive nature of the evidence and then the coronavirus pandemic, the first hearings did not kick off until last Monday.
Its conclusions are not expected before 2023.
This investigation will be seeking out the truth, said David Barr, a lawyer with the investigative team.
According to British media reports, at least 139 police officers have infiltrated more than 1,000 groups since 1968, the year that Scotland Yard created the so-called Special Demonstration Squad to monitor protests against the Vietnam War.
The groups are mostly left wing -- trade unions, environmental organisations, and anti-racist, pacifist or feminist associations -- but the far right was also targeted.
The squad was disbanded in 2008, as was a similar body, the National Public Order Intelligence Unit, two years later.
Some of those groups, they were so on the fringes, they were so low level that the operations could hardly be justified, lawyer Lydia Dagostino, who coordinates the defences of those targeted, told AFP.
- 'Emotional manipulation' -
The people who were spied on have a genuine desire... to know the truth... so that it does not happen again, Dagostino said.
Some of the women were hugely damaged and they'll never get over it, she added.
Police apologised to several women in 2015, compensating them financially, and said this week that sex with targets was no longer allowed.
Infiltration is now based on clear ethical guidelines and a legislative framework, they added.
But that comes as little comfort to Kate, one of the many women who shared Kennedy's life during a deployment that also took him to France, Germany and Spain.
Dagostino said the deliberate emotional manipulation of agents was a common tactic, and slammed the hearings, which are not open to the public or broadcast online, as a state cover-up.
Transcripts are published online but Dagostino said she was angry that dozens of police officers had not been identified, even by their cover names.