Fed: Lappas spy trial jury to continue deliberations

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Fed: Lappas spy trial jury to continue deliberations

CANBERRA, Dec 12 AAP - An ACT Supreme Court jury will reconvene tomorrow to furtherconsider charges against a former defence analyst.

Simon Lappas, 27, a former analyst with the Defence Intelligence Organisation (DIO),has pleaded not guilty to passing top secret documents to a woman for a purpose intendedto be prejudicial to the safety or defence of Australia.

Lappas, who had worked for DIO for just eight months, has not denied passing on thedocument and his defence relied on his mental state at the time.

Much of the 10-day long trial has been held behind closed doors because of security implications.

The 12-member jury retired this morning but after six hours of deliberations were unableto reach a verdict.

The jury has heard Lappas allegedly gave the documents to the woman, a prostitute,in July, 2000, with instructions to sell them.

The court has heard that Lappas and the woman met when he visited a Canberra brotheland she subsequently agreed to meet him as a private client, intending to spend two nightswith him at $1,000 a night.

That turned into three with him pouring out his heart to her.

He gave her three documents with instructions to sell them to a foreign embassy, sayingthey should be worth $5,000. They were never handed over.

Neither the content of the documents nor the foreign embassy have been identified.

Lappas subsequently confessed to a colleague that he had done a stupid thing. It wasthen that police became involved.

A top defence official said the documents were cobbled together from unclassified translationsof e-mails plus one labelled `security in confidence' and they posed no threat to nationalsecurity.

Lappas' lawyer Lex Lasry, QC, said his client was depressed, lonely, in doubt abouthis forthcoming marriage and suffering a mental impairment at the time.

His sole motivation was to help the woman out of her financial difficulties as a meansof holding on to her, he said.

But the prosecution counsel Richard Maidment, SC, argued that he knew just what hewas doing and had highlighted and added hand-written notes, indicating he intended thedocuments to be useful and of considerable value.

Mr Maidment said Lappas had instructed the woman to burn the most sensitive of thethree documents, indicating he was aware it could prove incriminating.

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KEYWORD: LAPPAS NIGHTLEAD