A FORMER senior police officer alleged to have overseen spying on journalists in Northern Ireland must give evidence in person, a court has ruled.

The Investigatory Power Tribunal, sitting at the Royal Courts of Justice in London, is considering the cases of Trevor Birney and Barry McCaffrey.

The journalists worked on the No Stone Unturned documentary film about 1994’s Lochinisland massacre.

Their homes were raided by police in 2018 in response to the documentary.

The tribunal also heard that hundreds of journalists and lawyers’ phone records have been surveilled by the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) over more than a decade.

The Tribunal was told that Detective Ellis, then of the Durham Constabulary, had played a significant role in the surveillance of Mr Birney and Mr McCaffrey.

The claimants argued that Mr Ellis’s evidence is critical to understanding the case, which has already revealed spying on as many as 320 journalists and 500 lawyers in Northern Ireland.

Mr Ellis was drafted in by PSNI to oversee the investigation into the pair.

Documents disclosed to the court include many of Mr Ellis’s detailed notes of meetings held with PSNI officers, describing a secret database of journalists’ phone numbers used for ongoing surveillance.

An email sent by Mr Ellis to the court was read out. In it, he accused the journalists and their legal teams of “placing a ring of steel around corrupt activity” and “living in a community where they are not held to account.”

Ben Jaffey KC, for Mr Birney and Mr McCaffrey, described these comments as “profoundly damaging to journalists and their lawyers, and an attempt to drag us into the past.”

The hearing is likely to resume in October.