M16 denies assassination claim

THE former head of Britain’s MI6 today sought finally to draw a line under two notorious claims that rogue elements within the intelligence services have plotted to assassinate high-profile political figures.

In the unlikely setting of the Diana, Princess of Wales inquest, Richard Dearlove said it just would not happen in line with the guiding principle that assassination plays no part in Her Majesty’s secret services.

Both claims have come from renegade former British agents.

The first, repeated at the hearing, came from former MI6 spy Richard Tomlinson. He says that a colleague drew up detailed plans to kill a top Balkan leader suspected of genocide to prevent him coming to power.

The agent, named only as “A”, drew up the assassination plan for MI6 around 1993, Tomlinson has told the inquest.

The other, from former MI5 officer David Shayler, is that SIS (Secret Intelligence Service) along with one of its Libyan agents was involved in a plot to kill Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi.

Dearlove stated that the Balkan plot was “killed stone dead” after it was put down on paper.

“The idea was out of touch with service practice, service ethos and it was not a proposal which consideration would be given,” he claimed.

The document was shredded without being circulated, he claimed.

Tomlinson had said that important documents which had to be accountable were never shredded and a paper trail of who had looked at them was kept.

But Ian Burnett QC, for the coroner, asked: “The question arises is that if you are saying that SIS does not contemplate assassination how is it that one of its officers could have raised the possibility and committed it to writing?” Dearlove agreed it was a very unusual event.

Confirming that the proposed target was not Slobodan Milosevic, he told the jury: “An officer had suggested the possibility of assassinating a political personality who was involved in ethnic cleansing.”

The revelation could provoke speculation over whether MI6 was considering an attack on a figure such as Serbian warlord Arkan who was eventually gunned down in January 2000. There is no suggestion MI6 was involved.

Tomlinson was jailed in 1997 for breaching the Official Secrets Act.