Sun journalist calls on DPP to resign over Operation Elveden 'witch-hunt'
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Version 0 of 1. The director of public prosecutions must resign after the collapse of cases against tabloid journalists “destroyed confidence” in the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), a Sun journalist has said. Vince Soodin, 40, one of nine current or former journalists told earlier this month by the CPS that prosecutions against them over the Operation Elveden investigation into leaks from public officials were being dropped, called the process a “witch-hunt”. Related: Operation Elveden: Andy Coulson and eight other cases dropped by DPP He wrote in a column for the Daily Telegraph: “Sun journalists have faced 48 charges related to misconduct in public office. The CPS has not won one. “My suspension [from the Sun] was lifted this week and I am free to return to work, but this is the chilling consequence of the Elveden offensive – what do I do next time a public official contacts my newspaper with a significant public-interest story?” Soodin said the collapse of the trials of nine out of 12 journalists, coupled with the CPS decision not to charge the former MP Lord Janner with child sex offences, had destroyed confidence in the DPP, Alison Saunders. He said: “There is only one proper course of action now. She must resign.” In Friday’s Telegraph piece, Soodin described his 989-day “hell” on police and court bail since a dawn raid in August 2012, where officers stormed into his bedroom and woke his sleeping girlfriend. He wrote: “They went through our clothes and underwear, personal diaries, everything. Almost anything connected to my job was tagged and taken. They still have my Sun contract of employment – as though this is damning evidence that I am a criminal.” The charges against Soodin were over a story from June 2010, leaked to the Sun by a police officer who was using a fake name and email address, about a three-year-old child at a Brighton school who was attacked by a fox, shortly after a high-profile attack by a fox on baby twins in east London. The officer was paid £500 for the tipoff. The same source later fed the tabloid another story about the serial killer Peter Tobin, this time without payment. Soodin’s call for Saunders to resign echoes that of the cleared Sun royal editor, Duncan Larcombe, who was found not guilty of conspiracy to commit misconduct in a public office in March. He urged Saunders and the Metropolitan police commissioner, Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, to quit in an article in the Press Gazette, in which he described Operation Elveden as “an affront to a democratic country”. Saunders, who took over the cases from the former DPP Keir Starmer, had pressed on with the prosecutions until the CPS was told it must review the cases by the court of appeal. In all, 27 journalists have been charged under Operation Elveden, which has cost £20m, and just two have been convicted. One of those found guilty won an appeal court ruling in March overturning their conviction. Related: CPS reviews policy of prosecuting journalists over leaks by public officials The lord chief justice, Lord Thomas, quashing the conviction of a former News of the World journalist – one of two under Elveden – said the trial judge, Charles Wide, had misdirected the jury by not telling them the threshold for a conviction was high. He said jurors had to be satisfied that the actions amounted not just to a disciplinary breach but had done harm to the public interest in order to convict. The ruling forced the CPS to review the remaining 12 pending trials and retrials of journalists, which led to nine cases, including those against Soodin and the former News of the World editor Andy Coulson, being abandoned. A total of 28 public officials were accused of receiving £180,000 for the sale of stories and 21 of them have been convicted so far. |