Britain's Court of Appeal on Thursday threw out an attempt by the government to block publication in a British newspaper of extracts from the memoirs of rogue spy Richard Tomlinson.
His book, which purports to provide a detailed account of the workings of MI6, Britain's foreign intelligence service, cannot be published in Britain because of secret material it contains.
But the court ruled that extracts can be published without official clearance because the book is already available over the Internet.
The precedent set by the ruling will in future make it even more difficult for Britain's secret services to prevent details of its activities being published at home.
Tomlinson, who used to work for Britain's foreign intelligence agency MI6, has published the book, "The Big Breach", in Moscow.
He has a long-standing vendetta with his former employers, claiming they dismissed him unfairly and then persecuted him when he tried to take them to court.
Tomlinson's book went on sale in Moscow this week, but British readers can order copies over the Internet.
The Sunday Times newspaper has bought the rights to his memoirs and has already printed one extract. The newspaper will now be able to go ahead with further installments.
A High Court ruling at the end of last week said the Sunday Times could publish extracts of the book without consulting with the government once its contents had become "generally accessible."
The government then took the case to the appeal court, arguing that the newspaper should seek official confirmation that the material was already in the public domain.
But the appeal court said this should be left to the judgement of the newspaper's editor.
"It is not right that they should be subjected to a fetter on freedom of expression which goes beyond this," said Lord Phillips, one of the three judges who heard the case in the Court of Appeal.
Tomlinson was fired from MI6 in 1995 while he was still a trainee and later served a prison sentence for giving away state secrets.
He has since been living in self-imposed exile in Italy. The British government has dismissed him as a fantasist -- LONDON (AFP)
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
