Formal complaint to the United Nations

Yesterday we sent a complaint to the United Nations under Article 19 (freedom of expression) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Nonetheless, this morning we lost our internet connection for the 80th recorded time since 19 April, the day our live-in landlady, human rights activist Belinda McKenzie, was forced to withdraw her claim for possession of our flat due to the “wrong information” she provided the court, to quote from an email of hers later that day (see blog of 16 April Declan lodges our defence to Possession Order). Belinda subsequently served us with notice to vacate our flat next Thursday. In paragraphs 37-43 of our complaint to the UN, Declan outlines why the Vatican and the hierarchy of the Catholic Church should be monitored:

Belinda is not your usual 60+ landlady. I cannot list all the causes she is involved in, there are so many. She is active in groups dealing with issues as far-ranging as abuse in the church, anti-war activism and lay legal advocacy, and has been involved with the Iranian community for more than 20 years; she is even described as a “noted philanthropist”. As Declan points out in paragraph 23 of our complaint to the UN:

On 29 June 2012, the Metropolitan Police Service refused in writing to investigate Ms McKenzie’s written threat of 26 June to remove all services from the Applicant and his wife as of 26 July because the Independent Police Complaints Commission had ordered them on 26 June to re-open their investigation into Ms McKenzie’s written threat of the previous January to have the Applicant and his wife removed with the help of her builder (see Annex 16 containing MPS’s refusal to investigate, pp. 37-39).

In paragraph 7 there's the fact that MI5 whistleblower David Shayler lived for a couple of years in one of the rooms below us until 2007. It is indeed unfortunate that Shayler then declared that he was the Messiah, became a squatter, and was subsequently ridiculed in the press for changing his name to Delores Kane. A New Statesman article dated 11 September 2006 featuring Shayler and Belinda gives no indication that he believed he was the Messiah at that time; whilst a Daily Mail interview with Shayler explicitly shows he believed himself to be Jesus by June 2007.

The Esquire article below is mentioned in a Guardian article dated 27 March 2012. It is an eye-opener, highlighting the monitoring and surveillance that Shayler had to live with back in 2000, and the contradictory briefings and slanders that were coming out of the British establishment and the media. The author, Dr Eamonn O'Neill, now a lecturer in journalism at Strathclyde University, also intelligently tries to address the motivations of a whistleblower.

BBC PANORAMA: The David Shayler Affair (August 1998)

According to BBC Panorama, Shayler "caused the biggest crisis of official secrecy since the spy catcher affair". In 2002, he was jailed for seven weeks for breaking the Official Secrets Act.