NSS questions role of police and CPS in Channel 4 mosque programme

The NSS has written to the Secretary of State for Justice, Jack Straw, asking him for answers to a number of questions arising from the failed prosecution of Channel 4 over its Dispatches programme Undercover Mosque.

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15 May 2008

Dear Mr Straw

Channel 4 Mosques Programme – Police and CPS’s Role

The circumstances prompting the belated apologies of the Police and CPS over this matter are extremely disturbing and the wider implications far-reaching. I suggest some questions below which need to be addressed urgently to prevent further damage to the justice system and to restore faith in its integrity and even-handedness.

Journalists and commentators have been increasingly intimidated into self-censorship in recent years over minority faith issues and the Dispatches debacle can only have intensified this. Quite apart from the important Human Rights implications, such restrictions to freedom of expression are counter-productive. They benefit religious extremists whose hate speech goes unchallenged and right-wing extremists, whose popularity is growing as an impotent reaction to this. When taken together, all these concerns plus the reduced freedom of the press and the questions posed below make a powerful case for an independent public inquiry.

The questions I suggest are:

What motivated the police and CPS to act in the way they did?

Did any official or official body query the way the case was being handled and in what terms? How was any representation reacted to? Bearing in mind the exceptionally high profile of the case, should representations have been made by others or more searching representations made?

Has there been a further review to check if the film gave prima facie evidence of offences that have not been followed up? If not, why not and could there be a further independent review of this?

To what extent was freedom of expression considered, by whom and who concluded it had been adequately safeguarded?

Is there any evidence (we are not asserting that there is) of pressure from minority communities on police/CPS or a corporate culture that seeks to apply a non even-handed approach (i.e. a more lenient one) to minority communities? If so, could this have implications for the level of prosecutions over FGM, forced marriages and honour killings?

Have there been/will there be an appropriate review of individuals’ conduct in the Police and CPS and of their corporate culture to prevent a recurrence?

Has a misguided interpretation of community cohesion taken priority over fundamental justice issues?

Was Police / CPS independence compromised, and if so why and how?

Did the Police Authority act properly, both in its internal operations and in the external statement(s) it made?

Could / should police complaints be opened up to public interest complaints by groups, on a limited basis, introduced through an amendment to the Police reform Act?

What is to be learned from this sad episode and how could this be prevented in future?

Is there any evidence of similar problems (a) elsewhere in WMP (b) other forces and in the CPS?

We are copying this letter to shadow ministers in opposition parties.

With best wishes

Yours sincerely

K Porteous Wood
Executive Director

c.c. Shadow Attorney Generals and Shadow Justice Ministers in Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties

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