4.08.11 PRESS RELEASE
DANIEL MORGAN FAMILY CHALLENGE HOME SECRETARY
TO ORDER JUDICIAL INQUIRY INTO HIS MURDER
Lawyers acting for the family of Daniel Morgan have sent today to the Home Secretary a detailed submission setting out the grounds crying out for a judicial inquiry into the case.
The murder of Daniel – a private investigator found dead with an axe embedded in his head in South London in 1987 – has been the subject of five police investigations. None has resulted in any effective prosecution or trial of those responsible for the murder. An attempt to prosecute following the last investigation collapsed after 20 months of pre-trial hearings at the Old Bailey on 11 March 2011.
On 31 March 2011, Acting Met Commissioner Tim Godwin apologised personally to the Morgan family and acknowledged publicly that there had been a “repeated failure by the MPS over many years following Daniel’s murder to accept that corruption had played such a significant part in failing to bring those responsible to justice”. He added:
“We recognise that we have to take responsibility for the consequences of the repeated failure of the MPS over the years to confront the role played by police corruption in protecting those responsible for the murder from being brought to justice.”
Daniel’s brother Alastair said today:
“For almost a quarter of a century, my family has done everything possible to secure justice for Daniel and to expose police corruption. For much of this time, we have encountered stubborn obstruction and worse at the highest levels of the Metropolitan Police.
We have found an impotent police complaints system and met with inertia or worse on the part of successive governments. We have been failed utterly by all of the institutions designed to protect us. We have seen for ourselves a criminal justice system which has proved incapable of coming to terms with the murder or the subsequent criminality of those charged with enforcing the law.
In the midst of what is a tragic mess for my family, we recognise that those responsible for the most recent prosecution, police officers and lawyers alike, have done their utmost to redress the catastrophic failures of earlier investigations. Nevertheless, despite their best efforts, the fact remains that there has been no public scrutiny of the evidence available in relation to Daniel’s murder.
We find real significance in recent and continuing revelations around the News of the World affair in relation to the close relationships between NotW journalists, corrupt police officers and some of those charged with Daniel’s murder.
In that light, we call upon the Home Secretary now to order a full judicial inquiry into this sorry state of affairs. We consider that the material placed before her cries out for proper public scrutiny of the murder and its handling by the police and the prosecuting authorities over the years. We know she will need courage to ensure that there is such scrutiny - courage which we have found to be signally lacking in her predecessors.”
Contact
Alastair Morgan
020 7608 3124
07917 698 109
@justice4daniel
@AlastairMorgan
http://www.justice4daniel.org/
