Bugging case puts state surveillance under scrutiny

London: Britain's row over the bugging of a lawmaker widened with a police officer alleging he was pressured by top Scotland Yard bosses to listen to talks between the parliamentarian and a US terror suspect.

Former Detective Sergeant Mark Kearney said he was ordered to secretly tape conversations between Labour lawmaker Sadiq Khan and Babar Ahmad, a childhood friend facing extradition to the United States on terrorism charges.

Kearney said he came under significant pressure from the Metropolitan Police to put the visit under surveillance, according to a court statement from his lawyers sent to the BBC.

"The MP concerned was Sadiq Khan ... I did record the visit but have never felt it was justified in these circumstances," said Kearney, who worked for the Thames Valley Police at the time.

Ahmad, 32, was indicted in the US in 2004 for allegedly running websites that investigators said were used to recruit members for Al Qaida, Chechen rebels and the Taliban.

Cabinet ministers held talks on the controversy on Tuesday after Justice Secretary Jack Straw ordered an investigation into the alleged bugging.

Straw has denied knowledge of the surveillance and said government ministers were not informed. The Justice Ministry, however, has said some civil servants became aware of the bugging in December.

The bug was allegedly hidden inside a table in a prison visiting room and recorded talks in 2005 and 2006.

Police have been forbidden to eavesdrop on British politicians under the so-called Wilson doctrine, a policy introduced by then-Prime Minister Harold Wilson in 1966 to protect lawmakers from surveillance during the Cold War.

The same restrictions, however, do not apply to detainees or private citizens.

Britain has some of the most extensive surveillance powers in the world and has become a leader in what critics call "Big Brother" techniques ranging from secret listening devices to the more than 4.3 million closed-circuit cameras in operation.

But the criteria used to justify snooping has recently come under scrutiny.

Hundreds of Britons routinely have their phone calls, e-mails and mail monitored by police.

The home secretary authorised 1,333 wiretaps alone in the last nine months of 2006, according to a report last week from Paul Kennedy, a former High Court judge who reviews warrants for bugs.