TELEVISION journalist Martyn Gregory is to hand over secretly filmed tapes to detectives investigating the alleged trading involvement of a Glasgow company in electric-shock batons, regarded as the universal tool of the torturer.

Mr Gregory, who has already provided a statement, will be interviewed as a potential prosecution witness by Strathclyde Police on Friday.

In January last year, Mr Frank Stott, then managing director of ICL Technical Plastics Glasgow, was seen by millions of viewers demonstrating the effectiveness of the electronic baton, outlawed by Britain in 1988.

On the face of it, he was trying to secure a #2m export order for his company.

However, following the broadcast on the Channel 4 Dispatches programme, The Torture Trail, ICL Plastics denied the company had been involved in manufacturing implements of this type.

Nevertheless, after transmission of the programme, the firm's premises in Hopehill Road, near St George's Cross, were raided by police.

Yesterday, Strathclyde Police said the investigation was still very much alive. Inquiries were continuing and the procurator-fiscal was being kept updated.

Tonight, in a follow-up to the investigation, Dispatches returns to the torture trail. Despite the furore that surrounded the original programme, Mr Gregory will report that it is very much ``business as usual'' for British firms anxious to get involved in the torture trade.

The activities of two UK companies in particular will be highlighted - one of which points the investigative journalist in the direction of an organisation in Mexico City which manufactures the electric-shock batons.

Mr Gregory again poses as a potential buyer of the torture tools and secretly films the enthusiastic response of executives from the two British companies, keen to act as middlemen in securing lucrative contracts.

The journalist will also accuse the DTI - when led by the now deputy Prime Minister Michael Heseltine, who emerged from the Scott inquiry into arms to Iraq with a whiter than white reputation - of lying when it said the trade in electric-shock batons did not exist.

This was based on an admission by DTI Minister Ian Taylor that electronic batons had been given a licence in 1993 for shipment via the UK.

The admission came a week after the Government conceded defeat in a libel hearing - after allegations in letters signed by Mr Heseltine that the original programme had not been properly researched - and Mr Gregory was awarded #55,000 damages at the High Court in London.

In tonight's programme, Labour MP Ann Clwyd will declare: ``I think there's an enormous cover-up going on and the Government is deliberately dragging its feet.''

As part of the undercover operation, Mr Gregory and the Dispatches team set up a front company in Basle, Switzerland.

Eight British internal security companies were contacted with the information that the fake company wanted to buy 300 electric-shock batons. Initially, only two companies refused.

Some firms explained how legal restrictions on selling electric-shock equipment could be circumvented - largely by using offshore suppliers. One would-be British middleman is asked if the batons were non-lethal.

``Oh yes. I mean that's the whole object, otherwise you'd just shoot the guy,'' Mr Bill Buttimer, international managing director for Compass Safety International, declares.

After the secret interviews with Mr Buttimer, a direct approach by Dispatches to the company led to Compass withdrawing an offer to sell the torture equipment and the news that Mr Buttimer had since resigned.

Having offered to sell Dispatches 300 electric-shock batons, Mr Buttimer suggested that other riot gear, not connected with torture, could be obtained from ICL Technical Plastics in Glasgow. The person they should contact there was Mr Frank Stott.

The original Torture Trail programme last month won the Royal Television Society award for the best home current affairs programme of 1995.

In tonight's programme, Mr Gregory will insist that not only is the Government fully aware of the involvement of British companies in this trade but the DTI funded three-quarters of the cost of a report which advises British companies where to sell electric-shock weapons in the Gulf, where torture is widespread.

A section of the report, dealing with Qatar - where floggings are commonplace and beheading occurs - advises British businessmen that the special forces there were interested in procuring electronic batons.

Mr Gregory said: ``Since our investigation began, it is clear that those companies we have spoken to didn't care anything about our background. They were only interested in the colour of our money. That in itself is ironic, because we didn't have any. However, we are mere journalists and yet we were able to penetrate this trade with little difficulty.''

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