Appeal Court rules against Shayler's public interest claim

The renegade MI5 agent David Shayler will not be able to claim at his forthcoming trial that disclosures about national security matters to the press were in the public interest, the Court of Appeal ruled yesterday.

Lawyers for Mr Shayler had told the three judges that denying their client this defence was a breach of his human right to freedom of expression. But yesterday Lord Woolf, the Lord Chief Justice, upheld a previous order made by an Old Bailey judge – and provoked Mr Shayler into an attack on the judiciary and the secret services.

Mr Shayler said politicians and judges were complicit in allowing MI5 and MI6 to "get away with murder" and to ignore evidence of impending terror strikes. "In the context of what's happening today, it will be an enormous tragedy if MI5 had information and did not react to it," Mr Shayler said outside the High Court in London.

"It could be the difference between 5,000 dead and people behind bars. We have seen what happened in New York and this could happen again in this country if the security services are allowed to get away with murder and with failing to prevent terrorist attack."

Mr Shayler has denied disclosing information and documents contrary to the Official Secrets Act and a third charge of disclosing material obtained by telephone interception.

At the Old Bailey hearing in May, Mr Justice Moses said he would direct the jury to convict Mr Shayler at next month's trial if it was satisfied that he had been a member of the security service, that he had disclosed documents relating to security and intelligence he possessed through his position in MI5, and that he had no lawful authority for doing so.

But Mr Shayler, 35, said yesterday: "Our lives will continue to be put at risk by inefficient security services. How can they allow the security services to go on murdering innocent people?"

A spokesman for Liberty, the human rights group that is supporting Mr Shayler's case, said the ruling was a "mixed result" for its client. He said Liberty was were "delighted" the court had made clear that a defence of necessity was available under the Official Secrets Act.

Mr Shayler's legal team is now expected to go to the House of Lords to challenge yesterday's ruling.