Post: May 19, 2021 / 05:43 AM CDT / Has been updated: May 19, 2021 / 05:43 AM CDT

London (AP) — a family of private detectives killed in London over 30 years ago — an unresolved crime devastated by police corruption — has been accused by the British government of blocking the issuance of a report on the killings.

Daniel Morgan was killed with an ax in a pub parking lot in southern London in 1987. Despite five police investigations and inquests, no one was convicted, and police admitted that corruption prevented the investigation of the first murder case.

In 2007, police said they believed they were trying to expose a drug network that probably involved corrupt police officers when Morgan was killed.

A report by an independent committee that spent eight years exploring the new connection between the crime and the police, private detectives, and tabloid journalists involved in the case was scheduled to be released next week. But at the last minute, Home Secretary Priti Patel said it needed to be revisited due to national security concerns.

Morgan’s family called this decision “clenching teeth.”

“The intervention of the Minister of Interior is unnecessary and not only inconsistent with the independence of the panel,” they said in a statement. “It is the anger that betrays her ignorance, and the ignorance of those who advise her, regarding the power of her law and the mandates of the panel.”

Daniel Morgan’s Independent Commission said the government’s decision to consider the report was completely surprising.

“A review of this nature has not been filed so far for eight years since the panel was founded in 2013,” he said. “The panel believes that this last-minute requirement is unnecessary and does not match the independence of the panel.”

Raju Bart, a lawyer for the Morgan family, said the dead man’s relatives were “suspicious of the motive behind this very late, completely unjustified intervention.”

“It’s important to remember that the interior ministry itself was part of the failure to combat this police corruption in the last few decades before the panel was installed,” he told the BBC.

In a statement, the Home Office said the review “has nothing to do with the independence of the report and the Home Office is not trying to edit it.” As soon as you receive the report, you can start these checks and agree to the publication date. ”