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The 2007 royal blackmail plot was a UK scandal in which two men attempted to blackmail a relation of the British royal family. The relative of the royal family was alleged to have been involved in activities involving drug taking, and performing sexual activity on a male aide.[1]
Buckingham Palace refused to comment on the situation after The Sunday Times reported the story on 28 October 2007.[2][3] A spokesperson for the palace only stated that it was a police matter and that Scotland Yard was investigating.[3]
The two defendants in the case were named as Sean McGuigan and Paul Aðalsteinsson. McGuigan, a recovering alcoholic, had previous criminal convictions and was originally from Ireland with republican connections. He was released from prison under the Good Friday Agreement in 1998.[4][5] Aðalsteinsson held an Icelandic passport but also used the names Paul Stein and Charles Goldstein.[6] Both men were arrested on 11 September 2007 charged under the Theft Act 1968 and was held in custody in Belmarsh Prison.[7] They first applied for bail on 2 November, but this was refused.[7] An appeal was also turned down on 8 December.[7] They pleaded not guilty at the pre-trial hearing on 20 December 2007; the trial began on 14 April 2008.[8]
Both men were convicted on 2 May 2008 and sentenced to five years in prison.[9] It was the first case of royal blackmail for more than a century, but the expensive trial was described as an "overreaction".[5]
The trial was branded "a joke" and "a farce" by the men's lawyer Ronald Thwaites QC, who described the evidence against his clients as "insubstantial, insignificant, and incomplete," and said "you cannot convict people on evidence as poor as this."[10] Police had obtained £50,000 in cash from public funds which was being held nearby by a "money man" to "flash" at the men should they make a demand for it, a demand which apparently never came, the court was told. The pair were arrested in a sting operation at a London hotel by undercover police officers from the Metropolitan police's counter-terrorism unit.[5]
Aðalsteinsson was appealing the conviction when he was found dead at his flat in South Kensington, West London on Christmas Eve in 2016.[11] A public inquest into his death on 30 June 2017 heard he had become a recreational drug user, developed an alcohol dependency issue and latterly became addicted to prescription drugs due to the amputation of a leg. The inquest found he had died after suffering respiratory failure brought on by multi-drug poisoning.[11]
The Boeremag was a far-right white supremacist terrorist organisation in South Africa. The South African government described them as a South African right-wing terrorist organization with white separatist aims. The Boeremag were accused of planning to overthrow the ruling African National Congress government and to reinstate a new Boer-administered republic reminiscent of the era when Boers administered independent republics during the 19th century following the Great Trek.
HM Prison Wandsworth is a Category B men's prison at Wandsworth in the London Borough of Wandsworth, South West London, England. It is operated by His Majesty's Prison Service and is one of the largest prisons in the UK.
George Davis is an armed robber, born in Bletchley, England and active in England. He became known through a successful campaign by friends and supporters to free him from prison after his wrongful conviction in March 1975, for an armed payroll robbery at the London Electricity Board (LEB) offices in Ilford, Greater London, on 4 April 1974. Following his release, Davis was jailed for two cases of armed robbery.
The Guildford Four and Maguire Seven were two groups of people, mostly Northern Irish, who were wrongly convicted in English courts in 1975 and 1976 of the Guildford pub bombings of 5 October 1974 and the Woolwich pub bombing of 7 November 1974. All the convictions were eventually overturned after long campaigns for justice, and the cases, along with those of the Birmingham Six, diminished public confidence in the English criminal justice system.
Roger Caleb Rogerson was an Australian detective sergeant in the New South Wales Police Force and a convicted murderer. During his career, Rogerson received at least thirteen awards for bravery, outstanding policemanship and devotion to duty, before being implicated in two killings, bribery, assault and drug dealing, and then being dismissed from the force in 1986.
The Guildford pub bombings occurred on 5 October 1974 when the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) detonated two 6-pound (2.7-kilogram) gelignite bombs at two pubs in Guildford, Surrey, England. The pubs were targeted because they were popular with British Army personnel stationed at Pirbright barracks. Four soldiers and one civilian were killed. Sixty-five people were wounded.
Nicholas John 'Nick' Baker is a British citizen who was convicted of smuggling cocaine and ecstasy into Japan. He was arrested at Narita Airport on 13 April 2002 and found guilty by the Chiba Prefecture District Court in June 2003. He was sentenced to 14 years' jail with forced labour and fined ¥5,000,000. At his trial Baker claimed that he was tricked by his travelling companion, James Prunier, into carrying the drugs through customs in a false-bottomed suitcase. Baker also claimed that during his initial detention he was mistreated by Japanese authorities with sleep deprivation, no access to legal counsel, and that he was forced to sign a confession written in poor and inaccurate English. Baker's conviction was upheld on appeal but Baker's sentence was reduced to 11 years in prison and the fine to ¥3,000,000. Baker was transferred back to England in the Spring of 2008 to serve the remainder of his sentence. After spending six-months at London's Wandsworth prison, Baker was released on licence in October 2008.
Antonios Sajih Mokbel is an Australian criminal who has been convicted of a number of offences, most prominently commercial drug trafficking. He has spent most of his life in Melbourne, Australia. Operation Purana alleged that he is the mastermind behind the Melbourne amphetamine trade. He has been linked to Carl Williams, and charged but not convicted of two murders in the Melbourne gangland war. He disappeared from Melbourne while on trial in March 2006, and was arrested by Greek police in Athens on 5 June 2007. Since being brought back to Australia he has remained incarcerated.
The Hyde Park and Regent's Park bombings were carried out on 20 July 1982 in London, England. Members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) detonated two improvised explosive devices during British military ceremonies in Hyde Park and Regent's Park, both in central London.
The 2006 Ontario terrorism case is the plotting of a series of attacks against targets in Southern Ontario, Canada, and the June 2, 2006 counter-terrorism raids in and around the Greater Toronto Area that resulted in the arrest of 14 adults and 4 youths . These individuals have been characterized as having been inspired by al-Qaeda.
On 21 April 2001, Hannah Williams, a 14-year-old English schoolgirl was murdered after going missing during a shopping trip in Dartford, Kent. Williams's body was discovered on 15 March 2002 at a cement works in an industrial area of Northfleet.
Woolwich Crown Court, or more accurately the Crown Court at Woolwich, is a Crown Court venue which deals with criminal cases on Belmarsh Way, Thamesmead, London, England.
Domenyk Lattlay-Fottfoy is an English gangster and sex offender. With his brother Desmond "Dessie" Noonan, he headed a criminal organisation or "crime firm" in Manchester, England during the 1980s and 1990s and is a member of one of Manchester's most infamous crime families.
William James Fulton, known as Jim Fulton, is a Northern Irish loyalist. He was a volunteer in the Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF), the paramilitary organisation founded in 1996 by Billy Wright and later commanded by his brother Mark "Swinger" Fulton until the latter's death in 2002.
Mel Brown is a British landscape gardener and animal rights activist who rose to public prominence due to a planned bombing campaign aimed at preventing the construction of a new research laboratory at Oxford University. He was the co-founder in 2004, with Robert Cogswell, of SPEAK, The Voice for the Animals, a campaign to stop animal testing in Britain, which is focused on opposition to a new animal laboratory at Oxford University.
Colin Duffy is an Irish republican, described by the BBC as the most recognisable name and face among dissident republicans in Northern Ireland. He was cleared of murder charges in three court cases involving police and army killings.
This is a list of notable overturned convictions in Canada.
Stephen John Port is a British serial killer and serial rapist. He has been convicted of the murder of four young men and multiple rapes and sexual assaults of a number of others. Port received a sentence of life imprisonment with a whole life order on 25 November 2016.
Gangs in Liverpool have been in existence since the early-19th century. There were also various sectarian 'political' gangs based in and around the city during this period. During the 1960s and 1970s, crime in Liverpool mainly focused on theft and armed-robbery. In the late 1970s, drugs became the new and most profitable way for gangs to earn money and made local criminals very wealthy in a short space of time. Liverpool’s modern organised crime centres mainly on the drug trade. Merseyside police have reported in 2023 that as many as 120 gangs are operating around Merseyside.
On 29 November 2019, five people were stabbed, two fatally, in Central London. The attacker, Usman Khan, had been released from prison in 2018 on licence after serving a sentence for terrorist offences.
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