LONDON (AP) — Britain’s police watchdog says it will investigate whether police failed to pursue an allegation of child sexual abuse against the late Prime Minister Edward Heath in the 1990s.
The Independent Police Complaints Commission said Monday it had received an allegation “that a criminal prosecution was not pursued, when a person threatened to expose that Sir Edward Heath may have been involved in offenses concerning children.”
The Wiltshire Police force said it was trying to find “witnesses or victims who support the allegations of child sex abuse.”
Heath, a Conservative, was prime minister between 1970 and 1974 and had a home in Wiltshire county. He died in 2005.
A public inquiry in Britain is investigating whether police and other authorities covered up sexual abuse by powerful people over several decades.