London - Britain's renegade spy David Shayler won a legal bid yesterday for the right to plead that he acted in the public interest when he disclosed state secrets.
The former officer in Britain's counter-espionage service MI5 had challenged a High Court ruling in May that he could not use the Human Rights Act as part of his defence against allegations that he broke the Official Secrets Act by giving intelligence secrets to a newspaper in 1997.
The case is due to go to trial his month.
