BRITAIN: David Shayler, the former MI5 officer who sold details about his time with Britain's internal intelligence agency, was sentenced to six months in prison yesterday for breaking the Official Secrets Act.
Shayler (36) looked resigned as he stood up and was led from the dock at London's Old Bailey.
Trial Judge Mr Justice Moses said the defendant had shown "blinkered arrogance" in committing the offences. He was found guilty on Monday of disclosing information, documents and information from telephone taps, in breach of the Act.
The prosecution said he had potentially placed the lives of dozens of secret agents at risk.
The judge told Shayler he could be free after serving half his sentence. He said he had taken into account the three-and-a-half months Shayler had spent in a French jail while the Government tried unsuccessfully to extradite him.
Shayler looked relieved as the judge announced the sentence. The judge said he was prepared to accept that Shayler was motivated by a desire to expose what he thought was wrong - not by money. But he added: "Your own actions demonstrate a lack of any real insight into what you were doing or any intelligent foresight into its consequences. It is, contrary to your own belief, that blinkered arrogance which has led you here today."
The former spy copied 28 files on seven topics, including several on Libyan links with the IRA and Soviet funding of the Communist Party of Great Britain, before leaving MI5 in October 1996.
The documents, some marked "top secret", were said to be "chock-a-block" with agents' names and other highly sensitive information.
Jurors saw the weighty file of secret documents, but with names of agents and other ultra-sensitive information blacked out. The 28 documents were handed to the Mail on Sunday newspaper, which paid Shayler £40,000. - (PA)