PCC rejects Ian Brady's complaint against Daily Mirror

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The Press Complaints Comission has rejected a complaint from Moors murderer Ian Brady against the Daily Mirror, which Brady claimed infringed his privacy with an article headlined "Inside the mind of a madman".

The front-page article , published in May this year, contained extracts from letters Brady had sent to another individual while he was at Ashworth Hospital, who later passed them to the tabloid.

Sub-headings on the paper's front page described Brady's "weird life in jail", his "twisted thrill over al-Qaeda terror attacks", and his "arrogant sneers 50 years after the first murder".

The article contained information from the letters about his support for the IRA, views on Tony Blair and the war in Iraq, belief that Islamist terrorists are "lazy", and views on his care at Ashworth.

Brady was jailed in 1966 along with lover Myra Hindley for the so-called "Moors murders". He remains detained in Ashworth, a high-security psychiatric hospital in Merseyside.

Brady's lawyers said he was being detained under the mental health act and that the publication of his correspondence breached clause 3 of the editors' code, which covers privacy.

The Mirror argued that the letters had been written to a member of public and that there was a general public interest in knowing about Brady's state of mind given the crimes he had committed.

The newspaper also argued that there was a public interest in Brady's ongoing complaints about Ashworth Hospital and its staff, and said that the medical details contained in the article were already in the public domain having been covered by other media outlets.

The PCC rejected Brady's complaint , ruling that he was one of the "most notorious individuals in the country, who had committed a series of serious criminal acts almost half a century ago", and that his "crimes, subsequent incarceration and detention at Ashworth had been the subject of intense media and public scrutiny over a considerable period of time".

"As such, the commission considered that the complainant could be regarded as a 'public personality', a figure whose criminal activities, detention, medical condition (especially relating to his mental health) and treatment were properly the subject of ongoing legitimate discussion and examination. There was, therefore, a general public interest inherent in publishing information that added to this discussion."

The adjudication added that Brady had voluntarily sent the letters to a member of the public, and had corresponded with "many members of the public" during his time at the hospital, leading to letters from him already having been published by media outlets.

"In these circumstances the commission did not think it was reasonable to conclude that the relationship between him and the recipient of his letters should be regarded as confidential. This was particularly the case as there was no evidence that the complainant and the other party in the correspondence were more than casual acquaintances. On this occasion, the complainant had been disseminating his thoughts on a wide range of issues to a person who had no strong relationship ties with him."

The PCC ruled that the information published by the Mirror was not sufficiently personal to have caused a breach of Brady's privacy, and said that there was also a public interest in the material given his crimes.

By contrast, when the Daily Mirror published information from a letter sent to the murderer Dr Harold Shipman by his wife in 2001, the PCC ruled that the contents of the letter were personal and found the Mirror in breach of privacy .

The tabloid was not censured, however, after the commission found that editor Piers Morgan had believed there was sufficient public interest in the letter and decided not to publish more personal material that was available to him.