: "We still have work to do and we will do it."

MI5 director general Sir Ken McCallum apologised to IPCO, after the BBC challenged the Security Service's false statements to the courts.The revelation means that MI5 has effectively given false evidence in this case to every organisation or court which is supposed to have access to the Security Service's secrets and is responsible for holding it to account.

It also raises questions about how easily IPCO accepts false assurances from MI5, when it is supposed to ensure the Security Service works within the law and in the public interest.IPCO began its secret investigation into MI5's handling of the agent - a genuine neo-Nazi known publicly as X who informed on extremist networks – in 2022., known publicly as "Beth".

MI5 had told me he was an agent in 2020 while trying to stop me running a news story about the man's extremism. I had already heard he was an agent, also known as a covert human intelligence source (Chis), and told MI5 as much.The calls were an attempt by MI5 to protect and cover for X, a violent misogynistic abuser with paedophilic tendencies. Telling me he was an agent was inconsistent with MI5's public claims about always abiding by a core secrecy policy – known as neither confirm nor deny (NCND) – on the status of agents.

But the Security Service maintained it had stuck by the NCND policy - first in a court case where the government tried to prevent the BBC from publishing a story about X, and then in two further courts where Beth made a claim against MI5.

Keeping X's status officially secret meant that key evidence was withheld from Beth.The ban has also drawn ire from

, whose Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello warned Venezuelans in the US."The truth is being in the United States is a big risk for anybody, not just for Venezuelans," he warned, adding that the US is governed by what he called "bad people - it's fascism, they are supremacists who think they own the world and persecute our people for no reason".

Venezuela is one of the seven countries listed with partial restrictions.Since starting his second term, Trump has deported a number of Venezuelans alleged to be gang members to El Salvador.