Danish whistleblower appeals against prison sentence

international | anti-war / imperialism | news report

Sunday September 11, 2005 19:47

by Dr. Coilín Oscar ÓhAiseadha

+353-86-060 3818

Intelligence service presses for additional prosecution

On Monday 12 September, the Danish defence intelligence whistleblower Frank Grevil commences an appeal against the six-month prison sentence he was given last November as a penalty for leaking confidential threat assessments about Iraq to the Danish daily Berlingske Tidende the previous February. The leak undermined confidence in the Danish government’s decision to participate in the invasion of Iraq on the basis of the alleged threat of weapons of mass destruction.

Meanwhile, Grevil’s former employer will press for a new prosecution for further offences allegedly committed in a book about Grevil that has just been published.

In January 2004, while working for the Danish Defence Intelligence Service, Major Frank Grevil approached a journalist on the daily newspaper, Berlingske Tidende, to state that the Danish government had distorted the intelligence he had helped to produce, concerning the threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

According to Grevil, it was on the basis of this distortion that Denmark had sent a submarine, a corvette and several hundred troops to participate in the American-British invasion. (I kid you not; Denmark sent a submarine to the war in Iraq.)

Grevil was provoked to make his revelation out of a sense of public duty, in the light of the heated political and public debate that arose out of the failure of the invading forces to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. (The Danish submarine also failed to find any biological, chemical or nuclear weapons in Iraq.)

On being requested to provide documentation, Grevil provided the journalist with copies of confidential assessments of the alleged military threat posed by Iraq. Trained as a chemical engineer and army officer, Grevil had contributed to the threat assessments with analyses of intelligence concerning Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction.

These assessments contained a series of reservations that stand in stark contrast to Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen’s subsequent emphatic statements that he knew that Iraq in March 2003 was in possession of weapons of mass destruction.

“There is no certain information about operative weapons of mass destruction,” a report from the intelligence service stated, regarding the alleged Iraqi threat, on 30 January 2003.

Two months later, the Prime Minister stated: “Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. This is not something we believe. We know it.”

The leaked reports also contained political analyses of the United States’ motives, which might have served as a warning to the Danish government that the US was intent on invading Iraq, in breach of international law.

The discrepancies revealed by the leaked documents made front-page headlines on the Sunday edition of the newspaper and led to a renewed scandal about the basis for Denmark’s participation in the invasion.

Grevil was subsequently caught attempting to erase incriminating traces of his activity on a computer on which he had prepared copies of the leaked documents, and after a controversial trial lasting five days, he was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment.

The scandal arising out of the failure to find weapons of mass destruction, exacerbated by Grevil’s revelations, led to the resignation of the Danish Minister of Defence, Svend Aage Jensby, in April 2004.

Denmark still has approximately 500 troops in Iraq, stationed in the British area in the south of the country.

Grevil is a widower and single father of two children, aged 12 and 17. Needless to say, Grevil’s children are not happy with the prospect of their father being incarcerated for six, or even twelve months, as demanded by the prosecutor. There is, however, a chance that he will receive a suspended sentence.

Grevil compares his situation with a conscientious citizen who, having informed the police about a serious crime perpetrated by his neighbour, is charged with trespassing because he went into the neighbour’s garden to take photos to document his accusations.

“If this does not constitute a case of shooting the messenger, what does?” asks Grevil.

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Following publication of a book in which Grevil reveals the inefficient organisation and obsolete focus on Eastern Europe that prevails within the Danish Defence Intelligence Service, his former employer is determined to press for a further prosecution for breach of confidentiality.

In the book, entitled “I nationens tjeneste - Majoren, der fik nok” (“In the service of the nation – the major who had had enough”), Grevil reveals that the most of the intelligence analysed by the service was second-hand, coming from unreliable American and British intelligence assessments. The Danish service itself had, according to Grevil, only “one single Iraq source”, and the information provided by this source was “several years old and thus of very limited value”.

“There is no doubt that the book discusses circumstances that are covered by a duty of confidentiality,” said Jørn Olesen, head of the intelligence service, in an interview with the Danish daily, Politiken, on Friday. “For example, technical capacities, organisation and specific initiatives are discussed. We will now conduct a more detailed review and then hold a discussion with the department of public prosecution.”

But Grevil himself states that the book has been reviewed by two lawyers, “both of whom judge that there is no basis for a new charge.”

“We go right up to the line, but no further,” says Frank Grevil, who collaborated with award-winning journalist Charlotte Aagaard on the book.

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For further details, please contact Dr. Coilín ÓhAiseadha
at coilin -at- aatchoo -dot- com or +353-86-060 3818.