European Court of Human Rights - Spycatcher and media
01 January 1991
European Court of Human Rights - Spycatcher and media
bacdoc August=1991
Press release issued by the Registrar of the European Court of
Human Rights on 25.6.1991
THE SUNDAY TIMES v. THE UNITED KINGDOM (no. 2)
THE OBSERVER AND GUARDIAN v. THE UNITED KINGDOM
Hearing on 25 June 1991
The Sunday Times (no. 2) case and the Observer and
Guardian case were referred to the Court by the
European Commission of Human Rights on 12 October
1990 and by the Government of the United Kingdom on
23 November 1990.
Both cases relate to temporary injunctions imposed
by the English courts on publication of details of
the book Spycatcher and information obtained from
its author, Mr Peter Wright. The applicants allege
violations of Article 10 of the European Convention
on Human Rights (right to freedom of expression) and
also of Articles 13 and 14 (right to an effective
remedy before a national authority and prohibition
of discrimination, respectively)*.
[* The text of the Articles relied on is set out in
the appendix]
I. FACTS OF THE CASES
1. The cases originate in applications, lodged with the
Commission in July 1987 and January 1988 respectively,
by: 1. Times Newspapers Ltd and Mr Andrew Neil, the
publisher and the editor of the United Kingdom Sunday
newspaper The Sunday Times; 2. (a) The Observer Ltd, the
proprietor and publisher of the United Kingdom Sunday
newspaper the Observer, Mr Donald Trelford, its editor,
and Mr David Leigh and Mr Paul Lashmar, two of its
reporters; and (b) Guardian Newspapers Ltd, the
proprietor and publisher of the United Kingdom daily
newspaper The Guardian, Mr Peter Preston, its editor, and
Mr Richard Norton-Taylor, one of its reporters.
2. Both cases concern temporary injunctions - the precise
terms of which varied in the course of the proceedings -
imposed by courts in the United Kingdom in relation to
Spycatcher, the memoirs of Mr Peter Wright, a retired
member of the British security service living in
Australia. The book includes an account of allegedly
illegal activities by that service; part of the material
in it had previously been published in the United Kingdom
in other books and in television interviews. In
September 1985 the Attorney General of England and Wales
instituted proceedings in Australia on behalf of the
United Kingdom Government to restrain publication of the
memoirs; they were eventually published there in October
1987, after the Court of Appeal of New South Wales had
given judgment in favour of the author and his
publishers.
3. In June 1986 short articles appeared in the Observer and
The Guardian giving details of some of the contents of
the book. The Attorney General thereupon instituted
proceedings in England against the applicants in the
Observer and Guardian case for breach of confidence. He
obtained interlocutory injunctions on 11 July 1986 the
broad effect of which was to prevent those applicants,
pending the trial of the actions, from publishing further
details about the allegedly unlawful activities of the
security service described in Spycatcher or further
information originating from the author and obtained by
him in his capacity as a member of that service. In
April 1987, after summaries of some of Mr Wright's
allegations had appeared in three British newspapers (not
those involved in the present cases), the applicants
applied for discharge of the injunctions. In mid-July
the book was published in the United States of America,
where it was a bestseller; a