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Journalism of Courage
This is an archive article published on December 17, 2024
UK court rejects lawyer’s case against MI5 over ‘Chinese spy’ tag
Lawyer Christine Lee had sued MI5 over the alert issued in January 2022.
In January 2022, MI5 issued an alert against Christine Lee. (File Photo)
A London tribunal court on Tuesday rejected UK Lawyer Christine Lee’s case to sue Britain’s domestic spy agency MI5 after it issued an alert branding her as a ‘Chinese spy’, Reuters reported.
In January 2022, MI5 issued an alert against Christine Lee, in which the agency alleged she was “involved in political interference activities” in the United Kingdom on behalf of China’s ruling Communist Party.
Rejecting the claims of Lee and her son, the Investigatory Powers Tribunal said, “MI5 was in its rights to issue the alert and that it had not breached their human rights.”
‘Won’t do anything to harm second home’: Yang Tengbo
In another case, Yang Tengbo, an alleged Chinese spy, legally referred to as H6 until now — issued a statement on Monday denying any wrongdoing and asserting that he would never do anything to harm the interests of the UK as his “second home”, PTI news agency reported.
According to a court judgment last week, Tengbo managed to gain access to Buckingham Palace and to get close to British authorities as a “close confidant” of Prince Andrew, the Duke of York and a senior member of the United Kingdom’s royal family.
Until now, he was legally referred to as H6, however High Court in London lifted restrictions on naming the businessman, due to a “high level of speculation and misreporting in the media”. The move came after Member of Parliament Richard Tice of Reform UK threatened to use his parliamentary privilege to reveal the identity of H6 in the House of Commons if the anonymity order was not lifted.
“Due to the high level of speculation and misreporting in the media and elsewhere, I have asked my legal team to disclose my identity. I have done nothing wrong or unlawful and the concerns raised by the Home Office against me are ill-founded. The widespread description of me as a ‘spy’ is entirely untrue,” Tengbo said in a statement following the Royal Courts of Justice order.
The businessman claimed he was excluded from seeing most of the evidence that was used against him by the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC) which had reviewed his exclusion order from the UK by the Home Office last year on espionage charges.
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