A GCHQ intern from Rochdale has lost a Court of Appeal bid to reduce his jail term after taking top secret data home and endangering national security. Hasaan Arshad, 26, breached stringent security rules when he used his mobile phone to remove material from a computer system at Government Communications Headquarters, known as GCHQ, and transfer it to his private computer on August 24 2022.
Arshad, a computer science student at the University of Manchester, was said to be motivated by a desire to complete the project he had been tasked with as his placement was coming to an end.
Sentence and offences
The 26-year-old previously admitted an offence under the Computer Misuse Act and two charges of making an indecent photograph of a child in relation to 40 category A videos and four category B videos downloaded from the dark web and found on his personal phone following his arrest. He was jailed for seven-and-a-half years at the Old Bailey last year.
At the Court of Appeal on Thursday, October 29, Lady Justice Cockerill, sitting with Lord Justice Dingemans and Mr Justice Goose, refused Arshad permission to challenge his sentence, saying there were no arguable grounds that the sentencing judge was wrong.
She said the judge, Mrs Justice McGowan, had given “careful consideration” to Arshad’s “age, immaturity and neurodivergence” and had rightly taken into account the serious harm to national security which could have been caused.
Appeal arguments
Rupert Bowers KC, representing Arshad, argued the sentencing judge had made the sentence too high for a first-time offender. He said Arshad had “noble if misguided” intentions and no “corrupt motive”.
Mr Bowers said: “This is an exceptional case because of the motivations and the intentions. Yes, a serious offence has been committed by someone who was reckless, but he has not committed it intentionally to harm national security.”
Prosecutor Duncan Atkinson KC told the Old Bailey last year that Arshad’s actions “lost a tool” being developed at GCHQ, risked exposing the identities of 17 GCHQ colleagues, and undermined the trust of partners, which “created a significant risk of damage to national security”.
Background and impact
GCHQ is the UK’s intelligence, security and cyber agency and plays an important role in keeping the country safe, in conjunction with MI5 and the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6).
At the time of the offence, Arshad was coming to the end of an industry year placement with a technical development team which required him to work at a secure GCHQ site near Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, and use computer systems. He was part of a team that worked on the development of “tools and techniques” to obtain information about threats to the UK.
Arshad had undergone GCHQ induction and was required to sign the Official Secrets Act. The Court of Appeal refused his bid to challenge the sentence.
