Spy papers plea rejected by Lords

BRITAIN's highest court has ruled that documents which may show MI5 and MI6 to have been working hand-in-glove with a Middle Eastern terrorist cannot be made available to a former senior diplomat, who was sacked from the Foreign Office and is now seeking to retrieve his reputation.

The Law Lords - the final court of appeal in the judicial system - have told Andrew Balfour, former vice-consul at the British embassy in Dubai, that he cannot be granted access to documents which he claims would prove that he was unfairly dismissed.

They have refused to overturn Public Interest Immunity Certificates - gagging orders - imposed by the Foreign Secretary, Douglas Hurd, and the former Home Secretary Kenneth Baker on the documents Mr Balfour sought to produce at an industrial tribunal.

Their disclosure, Mr Hurd stated in an affidavit hinting at alarm within Whitehall, would 'put at risk the effective discharge by the security and intelligence services (MI5 and MI6) of their current and future operations'.

On March 28, after a two- year legal struggle by Mr Balfour, the Appellate Committee of the House of Lords finally rejected his attempts to force disclosure. Where there was a risk of prejudicing national security, it ruled, documents should be kept secret.

Mr Balfour, 44, with 20 years' service in the Foreign Office and a previously untarnished record, was dismissed in 1990 on the grounds of accepting a pounds 5,000 payment in return for issuing a visa, a charge he robustly denies. He says he was ordered by MI6 in Dubai to become friendly with the man to whom the visa was issued.

He believes that he has become the victim of an elaborate plot by the Government to protect the identity of intelligence 'assets' in the Middle East. 'Perhaps they thought I knew too much,' he said. The documents, he thinks, besides proving his innocence, would show that British agents had a known terrorist in their employ.

Mr Balfour's troubles began with his relationship with an Iranian, Merhdad Ansari Shirazi. In 1989 he was questioned about his friendship by Foreign Office officials, but no action was taken. Several months later, he was arrested under the Prevention of Terrorism Act. He was held in the high-security police station at Paddington Green, west London, while being interrogated.

Transcripts show that Special Branch officers told him during that interview: 'Our contention is that you did something for money which may have assisted a terrorist. Is that something you really want on your conscience?' The 'terrorist' was Mr Ansari.

Mr Balfour was then released without charge and in 1990 he was dismissed from the Foreign Office on the grounds that he had accepted a payment of pounds 5,000 from Mr Ansari shortly after issuing him with a visa to visit Britain.

Mr Balfour has sought since then to prove that he was acting under instruction from MI6 while in Dubai and that he was ordered to establish a relationship with Mr Ansari. He accepts that money was paid into an account belonging to a relative of his but contends that this was a legitimate payment. He says that Mr Ansari had asked him to find someone who could help him with a printing contract. The relative runs a printing business. The money has never been spent, and remains in the account. Mr Balfour made no attempt to disguise it.

Despite this, he has failed to regain either his job or compensation from the Foreign Office. He can appeal to the European Court of Justice, and is seperately suing the Foreign Office and the Metropolitan Police for unlawful arrest following his detention under the Terrorism Act. He is seeking exemplary damages.

Mr Balfour says he was never himself a spy but became so closely involved with MI6 while overseas that he was one of the three diplomats expelled from Syria as British agents following the Hindawi affair in 1986. When he moved to Dubai, he says that he was asked by the MI6 station chief to befriend Mr Ansari.

It has emerged that Mr Ansari had moved to Dubai after being expelled from Turkey on suspicion of arms smuggling. After Mr Balfour's arrest in 1989, Mr Ansari was granted another visa to come to Britain and was then himself arrested under the Prevention of Terrorism Act, but not charged. Surprisingly in view of his background, his family was then given rights of residence in Britain. Mr Ansari confirmed this himself last week by telephone from London. He added that he did not have residence here but 'comes on a visa'.

He said he had never worked for the British authorities. When asked why police would describe him as a terrorist, he said: 'That case was closed.'

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