Power plant convictions quashed by top judges

Protesters in 2008 on a train carrying coal to the Drax power station in North Yorkshire after they stopped it just south of Drax.

Court of Appeal judges quashed the convictions of the protesters who ambushed a freight train on its way to Drax, near Selby, because of the failure to disclose the involvement of former officer Mark Kennedy.

The Lord Chief Justice, Lord Thomas, said the “complete and total failure” to reveal the undercover presence of Mr Kennedy was the fault of either West Yorkshire Police or the Crown Prosecution Service.

The actions of the former officer, who spent seven years posing as Mark “Flash” Stone, led to the collapse in 2011 of the case against six protesters accused of planning to invade the coal-fired Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station in Nottinghamshire and a review of police undercover tactics.

Yesterday’s hearing in London came after an announcement in 2012 by then-director of public prosecutions Keir Starmer that there were concerns about the safety of convictions relating to the Drax protest in 2008.

Lord Thomas said: “There was a complete and total failure, for reasons which remain unclear, to make a disclosure fundamental to the defence. In those circumstances, this court has no alternative but to quash the convictions.”

Participants in the non-violent protest at Europe’s largest coal-fired power station were sentenced in 2009 and 2010 at Leeds Crown Court.

They were charged under the Malicious Damage Act 1861 with obstructing engines or carriages on railways.