London police stole dead children's identities for undercover work
The London Metropolitan police secretly authorised the practice for officers infiltrating protest groups without consulting or informing the children's parents.
Britain's largest police force stole the identities of an estimated 80 dead children and issued fake passports in their names for use by undercover officers.
The London Metropolitan police secretly authorised the practice for officers infiltrating protest groups without consulting or informing the children's parents.
An investigation by established how over three decades police officers trawled through birth and death records in search of suitable matches.
It will only cause enormous distress to families who will discover what has happened concerning the identities of their dead children
Undercover officers created aliases based on the details of the dead children and were issued with driving licences and national insurance numbers. Some of the police officers spent up to 10 years pretending to be people who had died.
The Met said the practice was not "currently" authorised, but announced an investigation into "past arrangements for undercover identities used by SDS [Special Demonstration Squad] officers".
Keith Vaz, the chairman of parliament's home affairs select committee, said he was shocked at the "gruesome" practice. "It will only cause enormous distress to families who will discover what has happened concerning the identities of their dead children," he said.
The technique of using dead children as aliases has remained classified intelligence for decades, although it was fictionalised in Frederick Forsyth's 1971 novel . As a result, police have internally nicknamed the process of searching for suitable identities as the "jackal run".
