It's been claimed the Home Office covered up a catastrophic blunder when two drug barons duped a Tory Home Secretary into releasing them from prison.
Michael Howard managed to get a royal pardon for Liverpool career criminals John Haase and Paul Bennett in return for key information regarding illegal arms. A former senior Scotland Yard detective claims the evidence about the scam was redacted so the botch would not be reported.
The fallout then continued for years, ex-Detective Chief Superintendent Michael Hallowes claims, with unrecovered weapons used in high-profile killings years later.
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Gangsters Haase and Bennett used fake details when dealing with Customs and middlemen on the outside to stash weaponry, the ex-cop writes in his new book. The plot worked, and in 1996 the then-Home Secretary let the two criminals walk just 11 months into their 18-year sentences for smuggling heroin, the Mirror Online reports.
In 1997, Det Ch Supt Hallowes launched Scotland Yard investigation Operation Abonar into how deadly weapons, including machine guns, were getting into criminal hands and used in gang warfare. He came across another convict trying to use the same tactic as Haase and Bennett to get out of jail, he says.
Registered firearms dealer Anthony Mitchell was arrested for supplying the pair and other gangs with firearms and ammunition. But when Mitchell went on trial at London’s Old Bailey in 1999, officials demanded all evidence about Mr Howard - who was no longer Home Secretary - Customs and the scam be redacted from prosecution papers, Mr Hallowes claims.
They also instructed six other offences to be dropped, he says. The ex-detective believes this was a bid to prevent the media from reporting how a former minister had been tricked.
Mr Hallowes said: "It was a massive shock. All the evidence we put together about the scam was redacted. That was because the Treasury Solicitor, on behalf of Customs, warned the Director of Public Prosecutions that it was not in the public interest to expose in a criminal trial the facts that the Home Secretary and Customs had been duped."
Mitchell got eight years in prison. Haase and Bennett were reinvestigated and jailed in 2008 for 42 years for perverting the course of justice. Mr Howard said of the Mitchell case that he "had no responsibility for, or knowledge of, the matters referred to by Mr Hallowes in the context of that trial".
He adds on pardoning Haase and Bennett: “I had no alternative other than to respond to the specific request from the trial judge who had heard all the relevant evidence and had reached the conclusion that the pardon was necessary for the interests of justice.” HM Revenue and Customs and the Home Office declined to comment.
*Operation Abonar: Inside story of Britain’s biggest gunrunning scandal is published by Clink Street Publishing on March 23.
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