The unsolved murder of a private investigator 21 years ago which prompted claims that it was linked to police corruption moved closer to resolution yesterday after it was announced four people, including a former detective sergeant with the Metropolitan Police had been arrested in connection with the killing.
Thanks to The Independent for this news
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Metropolitan police have submitted a file to the Crown Prosecution Service after a fifth investigation into the murder of Daniel Morgan, a London private investigator axed to death in 1987. The inquiry has been led by Det Ch Supt David Cook.
The Morgan family have always believed that Daniel was murdered because he was about to expose police corruption and have fought a long and often bitter battle to bring his killers to justice.
An inquest in 1988 heard allegations that Daniel Morgan’s partner, Jonathan Rees, had planned the murder with the assistance of officers from Catford police station and that Daniel’s place in his company would be taken over after the murder by a member of the murder squad, Detective Sergeant Sidney Fillery. Fillery later took early retirement and took over Daniel Morgan’s place in the company.
The file presented to the CPS amounts to around 300 pages and represents the product of five investigations, some of them highly contentious. Daniel Morgan’s murder is one of the most-investigated murders in British policing history.
“It has been a long and sometimes hellish struggle for us to get to this point” said Daniel’s brother Alastair today. “We will now have to wait several months for the Crown Prosecution to decide whether, and against whom, charges will be brought. We want the whole truth to come out so that we can move on with our lives”.
The family have been told that the submission of the file to the CPS will not be the end of the investigation and that offices will continue to seek evidence to support the prosecution of all those involved in the murder.
“In the past, the Met’s treatment of my family has been shabby and downright provocative. In 1998-99, an inquiry was carried out behind our backs after we’d been campaigning for over a decade. The Met then forced us into a high court battle to obtain disclosure in 2003 of a report by Hampshire police on the murder”.
“Throughout our twenty-year battle, the Home Office has been an utter waste of space. We tried everything in our power to warn them about serious police corruption and were ignored year after year. It took seventeen and a half years before we were granted a meeting with a minister, Hazel Blears. We found them uniformly remote, gullible and ill-informed. I do not believe anyone in that department has ever read a report on Daniel’s murder”.
Since the intervention of the Metropolitan Police Authority in 2005, the family say that the climate has changed radically and that they finally have confidence in the integrity of the current investigation. “Until this point every single institution designed to protect against police malpractice has failed us.”
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A sample:
He raises a finger and points to something approaching from the same direction we have come. The road is shimmering with mirages. The ocean of yellow elephant grass around the village is limitless and still. I shade my eyes and see an open-topped limousine in which a man stands as though in a chariot. [...]
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