A JOURNALIST today won a legal challenge against a police force trying to force him to disclose the identity of a bomber behind one of the United Kingdom’s worst terror attacks. 

Chris Mullin successfully blocked West Midlands Police from using anti-terrorism legislation to reveal who planted the bombs that ripped through two Birmingham pubs in 1974. 

The attacks – blamed on the Irish Republican Army (IRA) – killed 21 and injured scores of others. 

Mullin, former Labour MP and minister in ex-prime minister Tony Blair’s government, wrote a book that helped secure the release of six men wrongly convicted of the atrocity. 

During research, the real bomber made a “full confession” to him, a court hearing in London was told last month. But the author promised never to reveal his identity.

In a ruling, judge Mark Lucraft backed Mullin, who was supported in the case by the National Union of Journalists, and said he did not have to hand over his notes to police.

“I decline to grant the production order sought,” he said.

Mullin, 74, said afterwards: “The right of a journalist to protect his or her sources is fundamental to a free press in a democracy.”

He has previously accused the police of failing to conduct a proper investigation.

If they had done so, he argued, “they may have caught the real perpetrators in the first place”.

Mullin’s lawyer, Louis Charalambous, said the ruling is “a landmark” for freedom of expression, and recognised the public interest of exposing a miscarriage of justice. 

“If a confidential source cannot rely on a journalist’s promise of lifelong protection then these investigations will never see the light of day,” he added. 

The so-called Birmingham Six spent 17 years in jail and were released in 1991. – AFP, March 22, 2022.