A DEFENCE Ministry site in Capenhurst has been condemned by the European Court of Human Rights for violating privacy laws by intercepting phone calls.

Europe’s highest human rights court ruled against the British Government for listening in to telephone calls between British and Irish rights groups and clients.

Rights group Liberty and its Irish counterparts, British Irish Rights Watch and the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, said Britain set up an eavesdropping facility at Capenhurst that intercepted much of the telephone, fax and e-mail traffic between Britain and Ireland in the 1990s.

The site intercepted all public telecommunications carried by microwave radio between two British Telecom radio stations between 1990 and 1997, the rights groups said.

For security reasons, the Government has never confirmed nor denied the statements made about its surveillance activities, but it agreed that the court could presume some of the civil liberties’ groups communications were intercepted.

The European court has been considering the case since September, 1999.

In giving its judgement, it awarded the groups 7,500 euros for costs and expenses.

The phone-tapping claims were first made in the summer of 1999 in a TV documentary made by investigative reporter Duncan Campbell.

He said that during a tour of the site he discovered surveillance was being carried out from a 48-metre-high tower.

He said the building’s 13 floors included eight floors of advanced electronic equipment and three floors of aerial galleries.

Mr Campbell claimed faxes, e-mails, telexes and other data communications were automatically sorted by computers scanning their contents for key words and subjects of interest.

The tower was later offered for sale.