A woman who was allegedly abused by a suspected Security Service informant has called for an apology from MI5, it was reported.
It comes after MI5 apologised unreservedly for providing “incorrect information” to the High Court in 2022 during the Attorney General’s bid to prevent the BBC from identifying an allegedly misogynistic neo-Nazi agent who reportedly attacked his girlfriend with a machete.
The Investigatory Powers Tribunal, which has heard a related case brought by the woman who was reportedly attacked, may have also been misled, as well as another set of High Court proceedings, it was heard on Wednesday.
The alleged victim told the BBC: “Where’s my apology?”
She said that she only matters to MI5 because she is “kicking up a fuss” by taking a legal case against the service and “throwing a spotlight on the way that they behave”, it was reported.
The alleged victim added: “But otherwise, if I were to just go quietly away, they’d never think about me again.”
In 2022, then-Attorney General Suella Braverman went to the High Court to stop the BBC airing a programme that would name the agent who also allegedly abused another woman and is a covert human intelligence source.
An injunction was made in April 2022 to prevent the corporation disclosing information likely to identify the man, referred to only as “X”, though Mr Justice Chamberlain said the BBC could still air the programme and the key issues, without identifying him.
At the hearing on Wednesday, the High Court heard that part of written evidence provided by MI5, reported to be from a deputy director in the Security Service, was false.
Jude Bunting KC, for the BBC, said: “This court was misled in the injunction proceedings.”
The written witness statement said the Security Service had maintained its policy of neither confirming nor denying (NCND) the identities of intelligence sources, according to the BBC.
However, the broadcaster has said MI5 disclosed X’s status to one of its reporters, but then said it had kept to the NCND policy.
The corporation has also said MI5 changed its position once the BBC provided evidence, including a recording of a phone call in which X’s status was confirmed to the reporter.
Following the hearing, MI5 director-general Sir Ken McCallum said the agency had “offered an unreserved apology to the court”.
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper told MPs it was “clearly a very serious matter to provide incorrect information to the court”.
In the programme about X, the broadcaster alleged the intelligence source was a misogynistic neo-Nazi who attacked his girlfriend with a machete.
He was accused of exploiting his status to wage a long-running campaign of “terror” against his girlfriend, including threatening to kill her.
The police also allegedly uncovered extremist material in X’s home, but he later left the country and was said to have continued intelligence work.
The BBC said it had also located a separate woman who had suffered at the hands of X in a different country.
