Undercover police officer fabricated gun plot by animal rights activists, inquiry told

Managers of an undercover police officer believed he had concocted a plot in which animal rights activists purportedly sought to obtain a gun to inflict a revenge attack on a political opponent, the spycops public inquiry has heard.

The officer, James Thomson, claimed he had uncovered the plot while he infiltrated animal rights groups. But his managers later came to doubt whether it was genuine, with one of them appearing to call it “bollocks”.

An activist who was accused of a central role in the alleged conspiracy said it was a fabrication that could have resulted in him being unjustly jailed for years.

The undercover policing inquiry has exposed repeated duplicity by Thomson, who not only lied to his managers but also deceived two women into intimate relationships. He initially denied the existence of these relationships to the inquiry before admitting them.

Questioned by the inquiry this week, Thomson has admitted that he disobeyed his managers’ instruction not to travel aboard, ripped out pages from his passports to conceal his travel from them, and obtained identity documents without authorisation.

Thomson is the latest undercover officer to be questioned by the inquiry, which is examining covert operations that spied on thousands of predominantly leftwing activists between 1968 and at least 2010.

About 139 undercover officers adopted fake identities and pretended to be political activists in deployments that typically lasted four years.

Thomson infiltrated activists who sought to disrupt foxhunts between 1997 and 2002. David Barr, the inquiry’s chief barrister, has said there were “very many troubling aspects” about his conduct, adding that he had told “many lies” to the inquiry, his police superiors and the activists he infiltrated.

He faces claims – which he denies – that in the later years of his deployment, he gathered little valuable information about the activists.

He is also facing questions about an incident that had previously been considered to be a triumph. In 2000, an anti-hunt activist was badly injured when he was hit by a car driven by a supporter of foxhunting. Thomson said anti-hunt campaigners immediately sought reprisals.

In 2001, he drove in his car with an activist to France claiming that they were getting a gun from a campaigner to take revenge. Assessing Thomson’s information to be credible at the time, his managers believed they had foiled the alleged plot by making it look as if his car had been stolen in Marseille. The car contained a gun when it was recovered.

But later, some managers began to question whether the plot was real. Another undercover officer told them Thomson had been given a gun as a gift and had stored it in a French deposit box.

One manager recorded his doubts in an internal report, noting :“There has not been a shred of independent corroboration for what allegedly took place.” Another believed that Thomson had “invented” the plot to prolong his covert deployment.

The activist who drove to France with Thomson testified that there was no such plot, describing the claim as an “absolute work of fiction”. He said that instead, his week-long French trip with Thomson was a convivial holiday, involving wine, visits to tourist attractions and a picnic.

The activist, known as L3, said the claims put forward by Thomson read “like some sort of Boys’ Own adventure story. But then I realise that this could have been the most incredibly serious event of my life. It could have led to me spending years in jail.”

Thomson maintains he did not fabricate the plot, adding: “L3 and I did receive a gun from the people we met in Marseille.”

Thomson said the balance of his mind “was far from normal” during his undercover work.