Renegade spy David Shayler has left prison today after serving less than seven weeks for breaching the Official Secrets Act. Shayler, who is 37 on Christmas Eve, was released from Ford open prison, near Arundel, West Sussex, this morning.As he walked free, he vowed to fight on to clear his name.
"The brevity of the sentence reflects the fact that he isn't a traitor and that he did what he did for the right motives," said his girlfriend Annie Machon.
"Otherwise he would have been facing a 14-year maximum penalty for treason.
Trial judge Mr Justice Moses accused Shayler of "blinkered arrogance" and of breaking undertakings he had given before leaving MI5 and jailed him for six months.
But he also accepted Shayler was motivated by a desire to expose what he thought was wrong, and not by money.
{this is no longer possible in the US.}Shayler spent three weeks at Belmarsh high security prison in south east London, where he was given the inmate number HP6007, a lampoon of James Bond's code number.
