A former employee of Britain’s MI5 domestic intelligence agency accused of leaking classified information to a foreign country had access to “everything” that MI5 staff could tap into, a London court heard Friday.
Juan Joseph, 43, who was an IT contractor for the MI5 for over a decade, is accused of breaching the Official Secrets and National Security Acts while raising grievances against his former employer.
The case is being heard partly behind closed doors at London’s central criminal court.
A protected witness from the MI5 told the court that Joseph had the highest level of security clearance and had access to “everything that MI5 staff would have access to” through staff desktops.
Joseph, a contractor since 2009, was dismissed from the MI5 in 2020 after he “began to display symptoms of mental fragility, extreme anxiety and paranoia,” the former MI5 HR head said.
Over the next two years, he wrote four letters of grievance about his work for MI5, describing a “highly disturbing” history of his workplace, which the agency has denied.
Joseph allegedly sent emails to “bodies representing one or more foreign countries” in 2024 and 2025, “whilst undoubtedly mentally unwell,” prosecutor Jocelyn Ledward told the court Thursday.
“Those emails contained information which the prosecution say should not have been disclosed in that way, the disclosure of which was damaging to UK national interests.”
The former IT worker travelled to Latvia in December 2024, allegedly asking to meet with representatives of another country at their embassy in Riga.
Ledward previously indicated that psychiatric evidence may be able to explain that Joseph was “labouring under a terrible delusion” caused by paranoid schizophrenia.
The defendent denies five charges, including two counts of making a damaging disclosure relating to security or intelligence.
The trial is due to last until the start of April.
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