Anti-capitalists are just one of the groups the extremism unit monitors.
Photograph: Paul Davey/ Paul Davey/Demotix/Corbis
A national police unit that uses undercover officers to spy on political groups is currently monitoring almost 9,000 people it has deemed "domestic extremists".
The National Domestic Extremism Unit is using surveillance techniques to monitor campaigners who are listed on the secret database, details of which have been disclosed to the Guardian after a freedom of information request.
A total of 8,931 individuals "have their own record" on a database kept by the unit, for which the Metropolitan police is the lead force. It currently uses surveillance techniques, including undercover police, paid informants and intercepts, against political campaigners from across the spectrum.
Senior officers familiar with the workings of the unit have indicated to the Guardian that many of the campaigners listed on the database have no criminal record.
As as Scotland Yard was battling to contain the fallout over the activities of a former undercover police officer who was asked to dig for "dirt" that would undermine the Stephen Lawrence campaign, evidence emerged that the main witness to his murder was also targeted.
Sources indicated that the Met secretly bugged meetings with Duwayne Brooks and his solicitor. The surveillance operation was understood to have been authorised by a "senior officer" in around 1999 or 2000.
At least two meetings are believed to have been covertly recorded, one of them at the offices of Brooks's solicitor, Jane Deighton. She told the BBC, which first reported the story, that if true the operation was "scandalous".... [...]
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