Spying suspect embarrassed top soldier

9:10pm Wednesday 15th October 2008

A top general who employed an interpreter accused of being a spy threatened to sack him when he kept the entire Afghan parliament waiting, a court was told.

General David Richards stood before the assembled legislators ready to make a speech but was unable to begin as translator Daniel James had not turned up.

The Afghans had been invited to the headquarters of the International Security Assistance Force, headed by General Richards, in Kabul.

But General Richards was left “embarrassed” when James, of Cliff Road, Brighton, who was supposed to be translating his speech to them into Dari, was late, the Old Bailey was told.

Major James Driscoll, who worked as the general’s military assistant, described his angry reaction.

He told the jury: “At that moment he said, ’I will sack him’.

"The general was due to make a speech, and Corporal James wasn’t there, so the general was left standing with a number of members of parliament to address, and he was left waiting.

“I took James aside and briefed him on punctuality - requested, in a military-discipline, aggressive way, calming down to an explanatory way, that he could not leave the parliament and the general waiting.”

On another occasion James went to greet the Iranian ambassador when he visited the general’s headquarters, when such formalities should have been handled by senior officers, Major Driscoll said.

The court was also told that James ignored military protocol by making himself a point of contact for General Richards with the Iranian embassy, when such matters should have been handled by the general’s staff.

James, who was called up as a Territorial Army reservist in March 2006, is accused of betraying Britain and passing coded messages to the Iranian military attache in Kabul.

The 45-year-old, an Iranian-born salsa dance instructor, denies communicating and collecting information useful to an enemy, under the Official Secrets Act, as well as wilful misconduct in public office.

The trial continues.

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