A Foreign Office civil servant accused of leaking secret documents to the media was today cleared of breaching the Official Secrets Act after prosecutors dropped the charges against him.

Derek Pasquill, 48, of Notting Hill, west London, faced six counts that he made damaging disclosures after passing confidential documents to New Statesman magazine and The Observer. The documents dealt with topics such as “hearts and minds of Muslims”, “engaging with Islamists”, conversations between the Home Secretary and Foreign Secretary, “detainees” and Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood.

But today prosecutors told an Old Bailey judge that internal Foreign Office documents disclosed as part of the legal process would have undermined the prosecution case that the leaks were damaging.

Julian Knowles, the lawyer defending Mr Pasquill, told the court the documents should have been released earlier, saving Mr Pasquill the stress of a 20-month Special Branch investigation.

Mr Knowles said Mr Pasquill saw today’s decision as a “vindication of his position that what he did was not damaging”.

Mr Knowles said the disclosure of the documents was in the public interest in relation to debates about public policy on engaging with radical Islam and the practice of “extraordinary rendition”.

John Kampfner, editor of New Statesman, said: “This is a spectacular and astonishing victory . . . for freedom of the press in the United Kingdom.

“This was a misguided and malicious prosecution, particularly given that a number of Government ministers privately acknowledged from the outset that the information provided to us by Derek Pasquill had been in the public interest and was responsible in large part for changing Government policy for the good in terms of extraordinary rendition and policy towards radical Islam.”

After the case, Mr Pasquill said: “This has been a very unpleasant ordeal. Over a period of 20 months I have been arrested, suspended from my job, subject to a Special Branch investigation, on police bail and then charged.

“I am relieved that I have now been completely vindicated in my actions in exposing dangerous Government policy and changing its priorities.”

Mr Pasquill claimed that his leaks to journalist Martin Bright helped spark public debate over the Government’s engagement with groups such as the Muslim Council of Britain.

They formed the basis for a Policy Exchange pamphlet written by Mr Bright in July 2006, he said.

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