MP accuses undercover policeman of firebombing shop

An MP has alleged an undercover police officer planted a fire bomb at a London department store in 1987. Green MP Caroline Lucas said a jailed man, Geoff Sheppard, believed police officer Bob Lambert planted a device. Mr Lambert infilitrated the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) in the late 1980s and his evidence helped convict two men of firebombing Debenhams stores in Harrow, Romford and Luton. The MP used parliamentary privilege to make the allegation. The BBC has sought to give Mr Lambert a right of reply, and is awaiting his response. Inquiry call Speaking in Parliament, Ms Lucas called for a "far reaching public inquiry into police inflitrators and informers". Caroline Lucas became the Green Party's first MP in May 2010 The attack in Harrow, north west London, did £340,000 of damage and was part of a series of attacks which cost £8m and caused Debenhams to stop selling furs. Ms Lucas said one of the other men who was jailed claimed when he heard about the fire at Debenhams in Harrow "I straightaway knew that Bob had carried out his part of the plan". Ms Lucas, MP for Brighton Pavilion, said: "It seems that planning the third incendiary device was perhaps a move to bolster Lambert's credibility." She said Mr Lambert was known by the alias Bob Robinson and "pretended to be a committed environmental and animal rights campaigner between 1984 and 1988". Ms Lucas said: "In October 2011, after he was exposed as an undercover officer, Bob Lambert admitted that, and I quote 'In the 1980s I was deployed as an undercover Met special branch officer to identify and prosecute members of Animal Liberation Front who were then engaged in incendiary device and explosive device campaigns against targets in the vivisection, meat and fur trades'." She said: "Mr Lambert has also admitted that part of his mission was to identify and prosecute specific ALF activists." Ms Lucas added: "He says: 'I succeeded in my task and that success included the arrest and imprisonment of Geoff Sheppard and Andrew Clarke'." She said: "Sheppard and Clarke were tried and found guilty, but the culprit who planted the incendiary device in the Harrow store was never caught." Ms Lucas said: "Bob Lambert's exposure as an undercover police officer has prompted Geoff Sheppard to speak out about that Harrow attack. "Sheppard alleges that Lambert was the one who planted the third device and was involved in the ALF's co-ordinated campaign."

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