The
appeal court however, overlooked the fact that the
email quoted contained the details of the training
camps discussion. Therefore, if it is accepted by
all that Michael was not at the meeting then how
could he have had the discussion about the camps?
Remember it was the content of this discussion that
was used by the court to enforce the charge of directing.
The court referred to the email as “contemporaneous”
yet failed to acknowledge that during the trial
the authenticity of the emails were challenged by
the defence. What’s more, the court also overlooked
the fact that Rupert had stated in evidence and
in the same ‘contemporaneous’ email that
Stephen, Michael’s son had collected him from
the McKevitt home and dropped him off at the meeting
house. Yet the Garda surveillance log offered evidence
to contradict Rupert once again. It reported a sighting
of Stephen miles away from the location of the meeting
alone in his car at the specific time Rupert claimed
he was with him! In addition, the Gardai surveillance
log as stated previously recorded Michael in the
front room of his home yet does not record Rupert
either entering or leaving the McKevitt home as
he had claimed.
Secondly,
Donegal was never mentioned as the location of the
training camp in any of the trial court transcripts,
judgement, witness statements or disclosure documents
submitted to the defence. This information was added
by the Appeal Court!
In
another example, the appeal court judgement states
“He (Rupert) was again back in Ireland in August
1992, this time with Linda Vaughan, who became his
second wife,..” Once again this is factually
inaccurate, at no time throughout the original trial
or in any of the documents related to the case was
it asserted that Rupert was married to Linda Vaughan.
In fact he had only gone out with the lady for a
short time and was in fact with someone else in
1992. There are numerous other such mistakes contained
within the appeal judgement which begs the question
how credible is the actual judgement if it is based
on such inaccuracies.
The
next stage of this process will take place in the
Supreme Court Dublin in late 2006. Michael’s
family view the Irish process with much scepticism.
They feel that to date his incarceration is based
purely on political grounds and that he will not
receive justice until his case goes before the European
Court of Human Rights.
©
2006 Marcella Sands.
Author’s
note:
Since
completion of the above account of the framing of
Michael McKevitt the following information has come
to the attention of the author.
In
the run-up to the trial of three Irish students
in the Old Bailey, London, May 1999, the British
Anti-terrorist Branch presented lip-reading transcript
evidence against Tony Hyland, Liam Grogan and Darren
Mulholland, who were accused of conspiring to cause
explosions in Central London in July 1998.
The
background to the lip-reading transcript is as follows:
While in London in July 1998, Liam Grogan, Darren
Mulholland and Tony Hyland were placed under 24-hour
surveillance by the relevant British authorities.
Prior to their arrest, Liam Grogan and Tony Hyland
were, on two separate occasions, filmed by the Anti-terrorist
Branch from a discreet distance while having a conversation
on a park bench in Acton Green in West London.
The
two video tapes (approximately 55 minutes in total)
were then sent to a lip-reading ‘expert’,
Jessica Rees. Ms Rees claimed to have outstanding
qualifications and a unique ability to lip-read.
The
Crown Prosecution Service and Anti-terrorist Branch
engaged Ms Rees to produce a lip-reading transcript
of the surveillance video recording. Ms Rees’s
final transcript which incidentally was compiled
post the Omagh bomb, contained numerous references
to an alleged plot to bomb Omagh (which subsequently
occurred three weeks after the three Irish students
were arrested) and a couple of references to “McKevitt”
throughout the transcript.
From
the outset the three students vehemently rejected
the authenticity, accuracy and validity of the Rees
transcript and questioned her ability as a lip-reader.
Gareth
Pierce, the three men’s defence solicitor,
demanded that the Crown Prosecution Service and
the Anti-terrorist Branch undertake a controlled
experiment whereby two actors would be recorded
from a distance but with concealed microphones which
would record their actual conversation. The video
tapes would then be sent to Ms Rees and her transcript
could be compared to the actual content of the actor’s
recorded conversation.
Both
the prosecution and defence counsel in this trial
agreed it was the fairest means to assess the veracity,
accuracy and credibility of Ms Rees’s work.
In
the final analysis Ms Rees correctly lip-read less
than three per cent of the words spoken by the actors
during the controlled experiment and she failed
to successfully identify any of the topics which
they had discussed.
When
faced with these appalling results the Crown Prosecution
Service and the Anti-terrorist Branch decided to
refrain from presenting Ms Rees’s original
lip-reading transcripts as evidence before the courts.
Justice Klevin accepted and acknowledged this decision.
Furthermore,
last year (2005), the BBC current affairs programme
Newsnight investigated all of the previous work
carried out by Jessica Rees. Gareth Pierce was interviewed
by the Newsnight investigating team. Newsnight exposed
Ms Rees’s lack of qualifications to lip-read
and numerous inaccuracies in her work. Consequently,
the Newsnight investigative report resulted in every
conviction which relied upon her evidence to prosecute
being re-opened and re-examined.
The
transcript concocted by the Anti-terrorist Branch-sponsored
lip-reading charlatan, Jessica Rees, is yet another
example of an underhanded attempt by the British
state to indirectly connect Michael McKevitt with
the tragic events in Omagh on August 15 1998.
