Northern Ireland police unlawfully put reporters under surveillance, tribunal rules

LONDON (Reuters) - Northern Ireland's police force unlawfully placed two investigative journalists under surveillance to try and find out their source, a London tribunal ruled on Tuesday.

Trevor Birney and Barry McCaffrey sued the Police Service of Northern Ireland after their homes and offices were raided and they were arrested over a documentary that alleged police collusion in the 1994 murder of six Catholic soccer fans.

The so-called Loughinisland massacre took place while people were watching the Republic of Ireland beat Italy during the 1994 World Cup.

The 2017 documentary "No Stone Unturned" named a Protestant paramilitary gunman it said police believed had shot six fans in one of the most notorious episodes of Northern Ireland's "Troubles".

Birney and McCaffrey were arrested in 2018 over the alleged theft of material used in the documentary from Northern Ireland's police ombudsman and claimed they were subject to covert surveillance before and after the release of the film.

The Investigatory Powers Tribunal ruled on Wednesday that the police force unlawfully authorised putting Birney and McCaffrey under surveillance in 2018.

"The authorisation, and any conduct following from it, were unlawful, because the Chief Constable did not consider whether there was an overriding public interest justifying an interference with the integrity of a journalistic source," the tribunal said in its written ruling.

The tribunal awarded Birney and McCaffrey damages of 4,000 pounds each.

The chief constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland, Jon Boutcher, said in a statement that he accepted "due consideration was not given to whether there was an overriding public interest in interfering with journalistic sources before authorising surveillance".

"This was one of a number of difficult decisions on a complex and fast moving day," he added.

McCaffrey said in a statement: "This ruling marks a significant victory for press freedom and it has exposed critical failures in both the monitoring and oversight of surveillance operations carried out against journalists and their sources."

(Reporting by Sam Tobin; Editing by Christina Fincher)