A DEFENCE Ministry site in Capenhurst has been condemned by the European Court of Human Rights for violating privacy laws by intercepting phone calls.

Europe’s highest human rights court ruled against the Brit-ish government for listening in to tele-phone calls between British and Irish rights groups and clients.

Rights group Liberty and its Irish counter-parts, British Irish Rights Watch and the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, said Britain set up an eavesdropp-ing facility at Capen-hurst that intercepted much of the telephone, fax and e-mail traffic between Britain and Ireland in the 1990s.

The Defence Ministry site near Chester intercepted all public tele-communications carri-ed by microwave radio between two British Telecom radio stations between 1990 and 1997, the rights groups said.

For security reasons, Britain neither confirmed nor denied the statements made about its surveillance activities, but it agreed that the court could presume some of the civil liberties’ groups communications were intercepted.