Police and armed officers at the Manchester Arena after the blast in May 2017<\/p>\n
On January 29th, the \u2018paranormal investigator\u2019 Richard D Hall was taken to court by Martin Hibbert at the High Court of Justice. I was one of the fortunate few to be allowed in, with most of the three dozen or so of the public being shooed out of the court on the grounds that they could not get any chairs and standing wasn\u2019t allowed. People objected on the sound basis that they were there to witness whatever justice was to be administered.<\/p>\n
As it transpired the arguments were rather oblique and the purpose of the court hearing was most unclear. In a nutshell, one could say that Hibbert claims to have been right next to \u2018the terrorist\u2019 when his bomb went off on 22.5.17 at 10.30 pm at the Manchester Arena and he was penetrated by 22 pieces of shrapnel; whereas RDH does not accept that Mr Hibbert was even at the concert. There is a big difference of opinion here BUT that was not, ostensibly what this court hearing was about.<\/p>\n
The case is supposedly being brought by Martin Hibbert and his daughter Eve: the latter has not been seen by anyone \u2013 reportedly \u2013 since \u2018the night of the bomb\u2019 ie no-one seems to have a picture of her or will say they have seen her.\u00a0 The poor child had a piece of \u2018shrapnel\u2019 go right through her head, in one aside and out the other, but don\u2019t worry she\u2019s back at school now reading and writing, or so the Court heard. Is Britain\u2019s High court of Justice allowed to hear a case brought by someone who is appearing as somewhat non-existent?<\/p>\n
\u201cThe claimants commenced proceedings against the defendant for harassment, misuse of private information and data protection breaches.\u201d The harassment charge is quite clear, that five years ago in 2019 Richard D. Hall did indeed go up to the home where Eve was living with her mother, and ring the doorbell. Oh no, he rang the doorbell! Well there was no answer so he went away. BUT he also left a film running in his car parked opposite for a couple of hours. Was that a data-protection breach? I don\u2019t think so.<\/p>\n
Ordinary folk are enraged (I find) when told about these charges: we all know what harassment means and this isn\u2019t it. As a professional journalist RDH has only used open-source publicly-available data. He has not violated anyone\u2019s privacy. He merely disagrees about what happened at a public event, which is no crime.<\/p>\n
At the hearing last week, I heard no word about alleged harassment or private-information misuse. I\u2019m not at all clear that there is any private information here involved \u2013 Mr Hibbert is a very public person, a\u00a0 bit of a media star in fact. Obviously harassment has taken place in this case but it was by the BBC, who sent a team to RDH\u2019s stall in Merthyr Tidvel in South Wales unannounced,\u00a0 interfering with his sales, filming him, then soon after getting the local council to close down his market-stall, then getting his Youtube channel closed down and sponsoring various media hit-pieces. Yes that is harassment.<\/p>\n
The\u00a0 judgement found against him, was that \u201c\u201d I find that the defendant has not discharged the evidential burden which rests on him. He has no real prospect, indeed no prospect at all, of success on the Issues and I will resolve them in the claimants\u2019 favour.\u201d What was the \u2018evidential burden\u2019 which rested upon him? The case was NOT ABOUT what happened on the \u2018Night of the Bang\u2019 \u2013 or should not have been. This is where the duplicity of this court hearing becomes evident: had the charge been libel or defamation, then everything in the court hearing would have made sense. The whole hearing was in fact about whether DRH\u2019s \u2018alternate version\u2019 of events that night was credible or not. Surely, RDH has defamed people, by saying they were mere crisis actors enacting a fictional drama. So why don\u2019t they sue him for that? They don\u2019t BECAUSE such a hearing \u2013 which could easily last a week \u2013 would allow RDH to present all his version of events to a jury . and where might that lead?<\/p>\n
RDH has produced a four-hundred page book which got about fifty five-star reviews before being banned by Amazon, plus quite a few highly-informative videos, plus an\u00a0 in-depth analysis of ALL of the CCTV released, so how has he not \u2018discharged\u2019 the \u2018evidential burden\u2019? He has analysed the event more thoroughly than anyone else in the world. What is the \u2018success\u2019 of which RDH has in the judge\u2019s view \u2018no prospect\u2019? For their evidence showing that Hibbert was present at the concert, the Judges report alleged that some fellow had viewed secret, un-released CCTV \u2013 too graphic for us, the public to see \u2013 which showed that Hibbert was present. Most people get quite angry when told that such a story is \u2018evidence.\u2019 At the court hearing, RDH called for ALL CCTV up to the moment of the bang, to be released.<\/p>\n
As regards the alleged suicide \u2018terrorist\u2019 Salman Abedi, the judge found \u201cIt is fanciful to propose that Salman Abedi did not die.\u201d Fanciful? THERE IS NO BODY \u2013 Manchester police cannot produce a corpse of the alleged suicide bomber. No inquest, no death certificate: nor for that matter can they produce bodies for any of the 22 allegedly dead victims. \u2018Habeus corpus\u2019 is a basic principle of British justice and can be loosely translated as, have you got the body? In the absence of a body, the burden of proof does not rest upon RDH to show that an alleged \u2018suicide bomber\u2019 did really commit suicide (for no known reason). We should be grateful for RDH\u2019s careful and excellent analysis of all the CCTV \u2013 months of work \u2013 indicating\u00a0 how Albedi arrived, parked his car, then escaped later in the same car, after seemingly placing his bag in the Atrium where it later went bang.<\/p>\n
So we finally come to the point of the convoluted logic of this court hearing \u2013 as to why there would be no point in allowing the Defendant (RDH) to present evidence as to what happened in the forthcoming court-hearing: \u201c\u2026 whether there are reasonable grounds for believing that further evidence or investigation would affect the outcome of the case (or, in this case, the Issues). There are no such reasonable grounds.\u201d His case is soooo unreasonable that there would be no point in allowing him to present it! Note that this final judgement has\u00a0 no connection whatsoever with what the case was supposedly about ,viz.\u00a0 harassment and misuse of private data.<\/p>\n
RDH represented himself in court and gave an excellent account of his case over fifty minutes. I personally would have advised him not to do that, which was in a way too much information, and to make ONLY one point about what happened on that night: that the Atrium by the main concert-arena has a glass roof, huge glass windows and doors, and NO they were not cracked by any blast that night.\u00a0 Nor were there any pock-marks in the walls from\u00a0 shrapnel. therefore THERE WAS NO SHRAPNEL. End of story. It\u2019s very simple.<\/p>\n
Journalists need to grill Mr Hibbert about the number 22. On the 22nd at 22 hours after 22 songs had been sung a 22 year old terrorist killed 22 people and Hibbert received 22 shrapnel wounds. Then Manchester police arrested 22 suspects .. and so it goes on. No wonder Hibbert has got the number 22 tattooed on his back. He didn\u2019t say a word at the trial, he didn\u2019t have to.<\/p>\n
Also see:<\/p>\n
https:\/\/checktheevidencecom.ipage.com\/checktheevidence.com\/pdf\/KB-2023-002102_Hibbert%20v%20Richard%20Hall.pdf<\/a><\/p>\n High Court hearing for Richard D. Hall<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n