Cairo, Jaipur and Karachi were pseudonyms given to three police officers who were involved in the Metropolitan Police’s response to the Undercover Policing Inquiry (UCPI), particularly around the applications for anonymity for former undercover officers and the associated risk assessments. They were granted anonymity by the UCPI.
Cairo was a senior manager in the Metropolitan Police with apparently extensive experience relating to covert policing, and provided statements to this effect in support of the Metropolitan Police’s applications for anonymity. This included setting out in general terms the perceived risk to undercover policing as a whole but also the impact on the individual undercovers. They were also critical of groups (including the Undercover Research Group) which had exposed undercovers and their abuses, and ironically had helped lead to the establishing of the UCPI itself. The overall argument was one for greater secrecy by restricting much of the detail of the undercover operations.
Jaipur and Karachi were also Metropolitan Police officers who served as welfare and liaison officers with Operation Motion. Motion had been established by the Met to reach out to former Special Demonstration Squad and National Public Order Intelligence Unit officers in the wake of the spycop scandal for welfare purposes and be a point of contact between them and the UCPI.
As part of its work, Operation Motion carried out its own risk assessments for the former undercovers which were later submitted to the UCPI in support of the anonymity applications. In connection with this, Jaipur and Karachi authored the Mosaic Report which set out the risk of exposure and argued that it posed a threat to the former undercovers, and which formed part of the submissions seeking anonymity for the officers.
This resulted in considerable criticism from non-state core participants who argued that the closeness of Jaipur and Karachi to the undercovers compromised their independence and thus their risk assessments could not be relied on as unbiased documents. Likewise, reliance on documents such as the Mosaic Report was also misplaced and ignored the reasons why the Inquiry had to be established in the first place.
The Met recognised the weight of the objections and in September 2016 withdrew Jaipur and Karachi as risk assessors along with the risk assessments they had drawn up. They were replaced by risk assessors independent of Operation Motion.
This all took place within the framework of the argument around the Restriction Order Approach.