22 Saturday April 9 2022 | the times
News
Dizzee Rascal has shown “no remorse”
and continues to blame the victim, a
judge said yesterday as she gave the
rapper a one-year restraining order for
assaulting his ex-fiancée.
The 37-year-old grime artist, whose
real name is Dylan Mills, also received
a 24-week curfew and was ordered to
wear an electronic tag after being found
guilty of attacking Cassandra Jones,
with whom he has two children.
He was sentenced at Croydon magis-
trates’ court after being convicted last
month of assulting Jones, pushing her
to the ground at her mother’s house in
Streatham, south London, in June.
District judge Polly Gledhill
described him as a “bully”, telling him:
“You have shown no remorse for this
matter, rather you continue to place the
blame on your victim.”
Mills gave no response in the dock.
He was said to have “barged” into the
home after a heated phone call. He had
separated from Jones in February lastDizzee Rascal still blames
victim for attack, says judge
Miranda BryantNBC/BACKGRIDSecrets left at bus
stop had locations
of special forces
The secret locations of British special
forces soldiers in Kabul were among
classified documents left at a bus stop
by a senior civil servant, sources have
told The Times.
Angus Lapsley, 52, who describes
himself as a “diplomat” at the Foreign
Office, sparked a transatlantic row after
taking a bundle of papers home in June.
The Americans were “furious”, said a
Whitehall source, because of concerns
the breach could endanger the lives of
elite US soldiers who were in many of
the same locations as the British.
The documents, which included at
least one marked “Secret UK eyes on-
ly”, were said to have contained the ex-
act number of soldiers in the locations
dotted around Kabul. Such documents
are not allowed to be taken from gov-
ernment buildings unless properly
logged out and securely stored.
Lapsley, who was in line to be the
UK’s ambassador to Nato before the in-
cident, was quietly shuffled back to the
Foreign Office, having been on second-
ment to the Ministry of Defence.
It is unclear why he was not charged
with breaching the Official Secrets Act.
His security clearance was suspended
at the time of the investigation and he
was removed from sensitive work.
According to his LinkedIn profile,
Lapsley, who earned as much as
£125,000 as director-general of strategy
at the MoD, has been a “diplomat” at
the Foreign Office since August.
His Twitter profile links to a govern-
ment site about the UK mission to the
European Union. The Foreign Office
declined to say what his latest role was.
The Foreign Office also declined to
answer questions on whether he faced
any repercussions, whether he still had
his security clearance revoked or why
the police appeared not to have been in-
volved.
Colonel Simon Diggins, a former
military attaché at the British embassy
in Kabul, said that information on the
whereabouts of special forces was “nor-mally very sensitive and deeply close
held”. “Special forces operations are re-
garded as very discreet so for that infor-
mation to be revealed I would regard it
to be a serious breach of security.
Having the information in the public in
such a careless way would be regarded
as a serious security failure.”
Richard Jackson, a senior civil ser-
vant, left top secret documents on a
train in 2008 and was charged with
breaching the Official Secrets Act and
fined £2,500. He left highly sensitive
Whitehall intelligence files on al-Qae-
da and Iraq on a train from London.
They were handed to the BBC by a
member of the public.
The source said that Lapsley picked
up 50 pages from the in-tray on his desk
and went home. The next morning he
was rushing to work when it is under-
stood the documents fell out of his bag
and were found in a soggy heap behind
a bus stop.
Once dried out they were also sur-
rendered to the BBC.
The source said Lapsley had claimed
none of the papers were secret. It was
only after conversations with the BBC
about the documents that it emerged
they included sensitive documents.
The BBC said at the time of reporting
on the documents that it had “decided
not to report details which could en-
danger the security of British and other
personnel in Afghanistan”.
Two months after the documents
emerged, all Nato troops withdrew and
the Taliban took over.
Most of the papers were marked “offi-
cial sensitive”, a relatively low level of
classification.
The documents also contained de-
tails of the Royal Navy’s decision to sail
HMS Defender 12 miles off the coast of
Crimea, which resulted in an aggressive
response from Russia.
A government representative said at
the time that an investigation had “in-
dependently” confirmed the circum-
stances of the loss and the manner in
which it occurred and there was “no
evidence of espionage”.Larisa Brown Defence EditorDancing on air Eddie Redmayne teaches Jimmy Fallon how to do the Fantastic Beasts “critter walk” on The Tonight Show
in LA. The British actor said the move calms the “terrifying” creatures that appear in the latest Harry Potter spin-off film
year and was said to be “frustrated”
over access to his children.
The judge said Jones was bruised in a
“scuffle”, adding that “children were
present and I have found you deliber-
ately tried to stop her calling police”.
Mills, who lives in Sevenoaks, Kent,
was ordered to pay £2,190 prosecution
costs and a £95 victim surcharge.
Arriving at court yesterday, he
reportedly got into a row with a jour-
nalist who asked questions about his
trial, shouting “you weren’t there”.
Mills was made an MBE for services
to music in the Queen’s birthday hon-
ours in 2020 and his seventh studio al-
bum, E3 AF — named for his east
London postcode and African heritage
— is due to be released in October.Dizzee Rascal was
a bully and lacked
any remorse, a
district judge said