Police are investigating after former Scottish secretary Alistair Carmichael received a death threat.
The Press and Journal can today reveal that the menacing letter – received the day after he was cleared by a special election court – was sent to the Liberal Democrat MP’s constituency office in Orkney.
The “abhorrent” threat is believed to relate to Mr Carmichael’s backing for air strikes in Syria and officers have deemed it serious enough to offer him safety advice.
It is the latest blow for the MP, who has faced a public backlash after admitting responsibility for leaking a memo written by a civil servant which wrongly suggested First Minister Nicola Sturgeon wanted David Cameron to win the election in May.
Last week he was cleared in a special election court of deliberately misleading voters over the leak, although the two judges did conclude he had told a “blatant lie” in a television interview when he denied having prior knowledge of the memo leak, which emerged about a month before voters went to the polls.
The action was brought by a group known as the ‘Orkney Four’, who had crowd-funded the legal action against Mr Carmichael.
However, last night a Scottish Liberal Democrat spokeswoman confirmed the death threat did not refer to the memo leak – commonly dubbed ‘Frenchgate’.
She said they hoped police would catch the person behind the death threat, which was received by Mr Carmichael’s office on Thursday.
“A threatening letter related to the recent vote on Syrian air strikes was sent to one of the constituency offices and was immediately reported to police,” she added.
“These kind of comments are abhorrent and it’s only right that the police investigate who is behind them.”
Mr Carmichael followed his leader Tim Farron in backing air strikes against so-called Islamic State militants in Syria on December 2.
Before the vote, he said it was “never easy” to support strikes but that they were justified in the national interest.
A spokeswoman for Police Scotland said: “Officers in Kirkwall are making inquiries following correspondence received at the constituency office of Alistair Carmichael.
“Safety advice has been given.”
Police are understood to have ruled out any link to terrorism in connection with the letter.
Mr Carmichael said he could not comment while the police investigation was ongoing.