INDEX	February 15, 2025
'Where's my apology from MI5?' asks victim of abusive neo-Nazi agent
The woman at the centre of a case in which MI5 has admitted giving false evidence to three courts says she wants the service to give her a public apology. Beth was attacked with a machete by her former partner, a neo-Nazi misogynist who used his MI5 role to coercively control her. We revealed on Wednesday that MI5 gave false evidence to three courts over its handling of the man - a paid informant known only as agent X. MI5 has now issued an "unreserved apology" describing what happened as a "serious error" - adding it took full responsibility. But speaking for the first time since then, Beth - not her real name - asks: "Where's my apology?" She believes 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". "But otherwise, if I were to just go quietly away, they'd never think about me again," she told the BBC. Beth says she would like to see X - a foreign national - to be personally "held accountable for all the crimes he committed", and for there to be a review of how he was to go unpunished and start a new life abroad. Beth's legal case claims MI5 breached her human rights by failing to protect her from agent X. She is pursuing a formal complaint at an independent court, called the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT). Judges ruled much of the case should be held in secret after MI5 said it does not confirm agent identities - under a principle known as neither confirm nor deny (NCND) - and had not done so with X. Secret IPT sessions would be closed to Beth and her lawyers, and therefore prevent her from knowing what MI5 says in response to her claim. "It felt completely offensive to be told that my case would have to be held in private and that I wouldn't be privy to any of the information because that's how they operated, as if they're allowed some special licence to completely breach my human rights." For sources of support for people experiencing domestic violence visit the BBC Action Line However, I revealed on Wednesday that I had been told by a senior MI5 officer that X was an agent. The disclosure happened when MI5 contacted me to try to stop a BBC story about his extremism. The IPT was one of the three courts to which MI5 gave false evidence, including by stating it had never confirmed X's agent status to me. MI5 first lied in 2022, when the government took me and the BBC to court in an attempt to block us reporting on agent X's wrongdoing - and succeeded in banning us from identifying him. Beth says the false evidence "proves what MI5 are capable of". "[It] feels like all my worst suspicions have been confirmed," she adds. "Everything that I was told by X about them, at the time we were together, has actually been proven to be the case - that they are unscrupulous people who will stop at nothing to achieve what they want."		This is a BBC website report by Daniel De Simone BBC investigations correspondent MI5 lied to courts to protect violent neo-Nazi spy How I exposed MI5's lie about its violent abusive agent Beth's legal case claims MI5 breached her human rights by failing to protect her from agent X.
INDEX Jonathan Brind	February 15, 2025