A case that has been going on over six years is not going as well for the British police as its spymasters had hoped. In February, one of the accused, concerned at the deceit and dissembling he was witnessing from his place in the dock, began to keep a court diary. In it he sought to highlight the Kafkaesque mechanisms deployed by the British security services in a bid to subvert justice and bamboozle both the court and wider public. The following account is a Birds Eye view of proceedings from Alex McCrory. 

4-February-2020

Today, Harry, Collie and I sat in the dock of a Diplock court as legal representatives argued about the disclosure obligations pertaining to MI5. For the past few years we have been making requests for disclosure which is being strongly resisted by the prosecution and the security services alike. 

The importance of disclosure has been highlighted by the many revelations of state cover-ups and refusal to share relevant information with victims families, as well as, with those before the courts on the most serious charges. Quite frankly, there can be no such thing as a fair trial without full disclosure. In this case, as in others, MI5 is withholding relevant information, citing national security concerns. When this happens it is the duty of the court to intervene so as to ensure the fairness of the trial process.

At the same time as we were sat there in the dock, Sinn Fein was promoting the RUC-PSNI alongside other Stormont parties. Orwellian...

12-February-2020

An interesting day in court. The main voice expert witness for the state has been giving evidence this week. Professor French is a leading 'expert' in the field of voice analysis. A practitioner for 35 years, he has provided 'expert' evidence in hundreds of cases around the world, both for the prosecution and for the defence. Let us look at some of his testimony today.

Basically, JPF Associates conducted the voice comparison work in this case. Without boring you all with the background, the professor produced seven reports, six being draft reports, and a final seventh report over a period of approximately five months. In the final report, he gives an 'expert' opinion on the likelihood of the speakers being the three accused. He does this by comparing our voices on reference recordings with the voices on the covert recordings.

He uses a likelihood ratio scale to determine the strength of his findings. His work is supposed to be carried out independently of the police who clearly have an interest in prosecuting the case. When giving his evidence, he supposedly is operating in the interests of the court and not for the prosecution per se.

I will deal with a number of glaring anomalies in his evidence so as to give a flavour of the Kafkaesque nature of the proceedings.

At the beginning of this process, the police supplied JPF with a package, e.g., suspect recording, reference samples, and a police transcript of the alleged conversation. According to French, it is not unusual to have a police transcript. However, it went even further in this case, because the expert was also provided with three names the police believed to be the suspects, and reference samples of the named individuals.

A short time after, his office contacts the police to ask for the names, addresses and dates of birth of the defendants. As if this was not enough, he had a number of meetings with the cops where the context of the covert conversation was openly shared. No contemporaneous notes or records of these meetings exists to inform the court of what took place at those meetings. Except for a few phone records there is nothing that can be scrutinised by the defence.

Furthermore, he was directed toward certain parts of the covert conversation which he was told to focus on for whatever purpose. All of this must impact his vaunted independence as an 'expert' in the eyes of the court. Cognitive bias is now recognised as an area of concern by judiciary everywhere. It has been identified as a potential contributor to miscarriages of justice

The importance of all of the above is that the CPIA, the act which outlines the guidelines for conducting investigations, requires a full, contemporaneous record to be made of every phone call, meeting, conversation, instruction, action, carried out by the prosecution, including expert witnesses. This is to ensure the transparency and accountability of the process from start to finish.

So far in this case countless MI5 and prosecution witnesses have failed to follow the guidelines and, instead, hide behind lack of recall and/or national security considerations. It's not good enough.

13-February-2020

I have just read John Cassidy's report on today's proceeding in the court. I am bemused by his lack of attention to detail and obvious omissions. He really should pay greater attention, or send a reporter who is better able to follow the evidence.

This is a farcical report that omits most of the important concessions made by the prosecution 'expert' witness under robust cross-examination. For example, Professor French conceded he and other colleagues conducted their analysis while consulting a police transcript that identified the names of three suspects, and attributed utterances to each. When asked whether he thought this was a good idea, French said that with hindsight he would not do it like that today, because of the potential for cognitive bias.

The witness admitted also ignoring proposals emanating from within his own practice on how best to avoid potential bias. These best practice proposals are now being incorporated into their methodology in order to improve the quality and integrity of the process.

On further probing the witness acknowledged general similarities within and between voices across the general population, and said that his conclusions have no scientific basis due to the absence of a statistical database.

What case was Cassidy listening to, may I ask? Perhaps he is operating under his own cognitive bias towards the defendants. In my opinion, the press have not been reporting this case fairly.

19-February-2020

We had two good days in court this week, Tuesday and Wednesday. Another voice 'expert' gave evidence on a second report that she conducted in 2017 at the behest of police. This was carried out almost 4 years after our arrest.

Why the need for a second report? Well, the answer to that question is very important in the context of the case. It was necessitated because the first 'expert', JP French, failed to distinguish between two voices in the reference samples supplied by the RUC-PSNI. The failure undermines the contention that voice analysis is an exact science.

In short form, Prof JP French confused the purported voice of Harry Fitzsimons with that of another named individual not involved in the case. Dr Kurchuble, a junior colleague of French, was instructed to compare the purported voice of Harry Fitzsimons with that of the other person for the purpose of exclusion. She produced a set of new findings, but she was unable to resolve the basic problem satisfactorily. In addition, she was asked to carry out a new report on all three defendants.

Under questioning she admitted to having been personally involved in the first analysis as a trascriber. She participated in a "collective listening exercise" of the covert recording along with other 'experts' and the police. By the time she came to do her analysis, she knew everything about the case including the names of 3 police suspects. Moreover, she had a the benefit of a police transcript which named the three suspects and attributed portions speech to each of them. All of this contextual and factual detail introduced the real potential for cognitive bias.

When pushed Dr Kurchuble admitted that the risk of cognitive bias was significantly higher in this case than any other she had been involved in. She accepted it is impossible to avoid a degree of bias once information and context is known; this applies equally to 'expert's. The fact she knew she was being asked to correct a mistake made by her boss was another potentially biasing factor.

Finally, Kurchuble concurred that her findings were "impressionistic" and "subjective" absent a statistical database of the relevant speaker population. The only database available to her was an academic study of 100 young male voices between the ages of 18 and 25 who attended Cambridge University. How. Now. Brown. Cow.

26-February-2020

Back in court today. A third expert witness for the prosecution gave his evidence during the morning session. Dr Philip Harrison is a phonetician-cum-acoustic technician employed by JP French Associate's based in York, England. It was in his role as a technician that he provided his evidence.
The evidence was technically complex in parts which is not my strong point. I will try to present an overview of the issues for the reader. Beneath the technical jargon is a crucial issue from the defence's perspective, i.e. the authenticity of the recordings. 

Harrison carried out an examination of a set of recordings supplied to him by the police. He was asked to comment technical aspects of the recordings in order to establish their authentic nature. Also, he was asked to compare the contents on a USB stick with the contents on 14 discs which form the evidence in the case. He concluded the material on both were identical and that they must have come from the original devices themselves. And here lies the crux of the argument. 

According to the cops the contents of the USB stick were directly downloaded from the devices via a computer. This process was carried out by an MI5 operator hours after the devices were retrieved. In line with MI5 procedure, the devices were wiped clean by the same person very soon after the downloading process, although he has no personal recollection of having done this, nor did he keep a contemporaneous note. There is conflicting evidence that the discs were produced before the USB, but again nobody knows by whom as there is no record.

The importance of this is the fact that the 14 discs handed to Harrison are described by the police as master tapes which, of course, they are not. It was argued by the defence that the 'master' would have to be what was recorded by the devices at the location. The USB and discs are copies of the covert recording obtained via a production process carried out by agents acting on instructions. Importantly, saying that the USB stick and the discs are identical is not to say they accurately represent what was captured originally. And since the devices were wiped clean it is now impossible to make that comparison.

But, this is only one aspect of the evidence.

This afternoon, the defence argued that in order to authenticate the recordings the state must show what occurred from beginning to end of the process. And that to seek to do this via expert evidence and witness statement alone does not reach the required threshold. Therefore, the only means by which this can be done would be to conduct a full authenticity test which is an entirely scientific method. And here is the punchline, that would require access to the devices and systems used to capture, store, and produce the evidence. However, in this case everything has been decommissioned and/or destroyed making such a test even more difficult to conduct. 

What does still exist are the devices themselves and/or a master-tape stored on a MI5 computer system which was also decommissioned during the life time of this case. How convenient!

Disclosure would allow experts for the defence and the prosecution to determine these matters in a transparent manner. This is where the battle lines are drawn after today.

This does not do justice (pun) to the proceedings and is a gist of today's evidence. Hopefully, it will help to inform.

4-March-2020

Another interesting day in court. PIN 4039, a technical manager in MI5, gave his evidence from behind a curtain, visible to the legal profession and cops only. His evidence was complex which makes it difficult to summarise for the casual reader. I will attempt to provide an overview without getting bogged down in the detail.

4039 was not involved in the investigation to begin with. For this reason, the judge raised a question about the admissibility of his evidence. This will be something the judge may rule on in the near future. 

This particular PIN was drafted in to address a crucial issue relating to the production path of the court exhibits. For the first 4 years of the case, it was purported by the prosecution that the evidence had passed through the MI5 computer system known as Marshbrook. This basically is a computer frame designed to gather, produce and store recordings stemming from covert operations.

The system has an intelligence side for use by analysts, and an evidential side for the production of an unimpeachable exhibit to be used in a prosecution. On the intelligence side, it is possible for analysts to view the data, and to interact with it in multiple ways, e.g., the data can be exported to another system, or altered, or edited, or deleted. On the evidential side, it is not possible to make any changes as the data is stored on magnetic discs and archived for any future prosecution.

As the direct result of defence disclosure requests, crucial gaps in the case opened up. For example, the Marshbrook system was decommissioned sometime in 2016 on legal advice. The more we probed into it, the more difficult it became to get information about the process involved. Other PINs in the case admitted to not having kept any contemporaneous records or notes detailing their respective roles in the process. 

Over the years, significant holes appeared in the continuity chain of the evidence. Enter 4039. He was tasked with review the production process in order explain what had occurred. He compared the USBs and discs and determined that they did not come from Marshbrook at all, except for one compilation disc. Today he was cross-examined about his findings pointing to an alternative production path. The problem he faced was that he had already misled the court in respect of Marshbrook.

As with the other witnesses, 4039 did not keep a contemporaneous record of the work he carried out. He claimed to have had spoken with s number of the key witnesses during his research. However, the witnesses in their own evidence said they did not speak with him at any time. When this was brought to his attention, he was lost for an explanation. Having no where else to go, he simply stuck to his guns. 

The prosecution are relying on 4039 to put the jigsaw back together. However, he can only go as far back as the production of the USBs and discs. What he can not speak to is what happened between the 6th and 8th December whenever two malicious viruses found their way onto the evidential court exhibits. He was central to creating the alternative production path so as to escape the shortcomings of the original prosecution narrative vis-a-vis Marshbrook.

Cross-examination resumes tomorrow.

5-March-2020

Today was our best day in court yet. Previously voice 'experts' for the state conceded that the voices on the recordings could not be said to be the three accused beyond opinion based assessments. Also, serious limitations in their methodology were revealed.

This week it was the turn of another key witness for the prosecution identified only by the cover PIN 4039. I posted a overview of his evidence yesterday last evening. 

Cross-examination of the witness resumed today. 

PIN 4039 was not personally involved in the investigation until much later when he was tasked to review the evidence in order to assess defence concerns vis-a-vis the continuity chain of evidence. 

The defence had identified a major gap in the production of the evidential exhibits, i.e. USB sticks and CD discs. In his original evidence he firmly believed the exhibits were produced by Marshbrook, an MI5 super computer used to gather, process, produce and store covert recordings. He believed this to be the case based on the witness statements of other PINs who attested to uploading and downloading the exhibits using Marshbrook.

Much later in 2018 when the defence drew the courts attention to serious discrepancies, 4039 reviewed his findings and, as a result, posited a completely different production path. As part of his review, he claimed to have spoken to several PINs who were directly responsible for producing the evidence via Marshbrook. However, most of these witnesses had no recollection of having met and/or spoken to 4039. 

At no time did 4039 consult Marshbrook for independent verification of what occurred, simply relying on other witness statements to explain events. Nor did he ever meet with a senior cop by the name of Hoskin who was responsible for the collection and management of all the evidence. On the contrary, he claimed not to have known of such a person. At no time did he contact anybody of the Marshbrook team in order to ascertain the facts.

Evidence was adduced today pertaining to a high level meeting which took place between several MI5 members (one being a rank below Deputy Director), and the two main PSNI investigating officers over the case on the very day that a court was told of the gaps in the continuity chain. Not a single person at the meeting took a note of what was discussed between them. When asked about the meeting, 4039 said it was to discuss the production path, as well as, to examine the USB sticks before they were shown to the defence the next day.

It was shortly after this meeting took place that 4039 began his review of the evidence and came up with the alternative production path. A convenient happenstance. When asked whether he had kept a full record of his research, 4039 said it was not common practice he would do that. Asked whether he understood the importance of keeping contemporaneous notes for the benefit of the court, he said that he never believed he would find himself in the position of giving evidence, and he would certainly note everything down in the future, he said.

Having been taken step-by-step through all of the conflicting evidence, in a thoroughly forensic manner, 4039 finally accepted the point that it was impossible to know what was done to the evidence before the USB sticks and discs were produced, because the devices were wiped clean either automatically or manually. He agreed also it would now be impossible to examine the laptop that was used to transfer the data from the devices to the USBs as that too was decommissioned/destroyed.

In the afternoon, it was suggested to 4039 he was being used by MI5 as a stooge in this case. He denied the suggestion. Furthermore, it was suggested to him MI5 was not the shambles it appeared to be in this instance, unless the mess it created was deliberate. He denied this too. He was asked whether he understood the impact of all this on the fairness of the trial. He said he was not a lawyer, but that it was very unfortunate.

Trial continues next week.


12-March-2020

Another two prosecution witnesses gave evidence today. The first was an expert on computer viruses. The long and short of his evidence was that two viruses which are present on two USB sticks were generic in nature date back to 2008 and 2010 respectively.

According to the expert, these viruses could only have been activated via an internet connection linking to a command server. However, his evidence could not account for what occurred before the USB sticks were created, i.e. he could not say whether the viruses were present on the actual recording devices themselves. Nor could be say for certain whether or not the viruses were used to alter the original data.

This afternoon a fourth voice 'expert' gave evidence in support of those who carried out the voice analysis. There is not much to say about this witness other than he was very poor. At one point the judge looked in our direction as he laughed at the pantomime unfolding. Even the prosecution was happy to see the witness discharged. I think his evidence added to the farce that is voice comparison analysis.

Now for the bad news. We lost two S8 applications today. This has been par for the course all throughout this case. Both issues will possibly be revisited in the future. It would be a lift were we to win an argument. This judge is hard to get by.


Alec McCrory is currently on trial in a British Diplock Court.

A Courtroom Diary

A case that has been going on over six years is not going as well for the British police as its spymasters had hoped. In February, one of the accused, concerned at the deceit and dissembling he was witnessing from his place in the dock, began to keep a court diary. In it he sought to highlight the Kafkaesque mechanisms deployed by the British security services in a bid to subvert justice and bamboozle both the court and wider public. The following account is a Birds Eye view of proceedings from Alex McCrory. 

4-February-2020

Today, Harry, Collie and I sat in the dock of a Diplock court as legal representatives argued about the disclosure obligations pertaining to MI5. For the past few years we have been making requests for disclosure which is being strongly resisted by the prosecution and the security services alike. 

The importance of disclosure has been highlighted by the many revelations of state cover-ups and refusal to share relevant information with victims families, as well as, with those before the courts on the most serious charges. Quite frankly, there can be no such thing as a fair trial without full disclosure. In this case, as in others, MI5 is withholding relevant information, citing national security concerns. When this happens it is the duty of the court to intervene so as to ensure the fairness of the trial process.

At the same time as we were sat there in the dock, Sinn Fein was promoting the RUC-PSNI alongside other Stormont parties. Orwellian...

12-February-2020

An interesting day in court. The main voice expert witness for the state has been giving evidence this week. Professor French is a leading 'expert' in the field of voice analysis. A practitioner for 35 years, he has provided 'expert' evidence in hundreds of cases around the world, both for the prosecution and for the defence. Let us look at some of his testimony today.

Basically, JPF Associates conducted the voice comparison work in this case. Without boring you all with the background, the professor produced seven reports, six being draft reports, and a final seventh report over a period of approximately five months. In the final report, he gives an 'expert' opinion on the likelihood of the speakers being the three accused. He does this by comparing our voices on reference recordings with the voices on the covert recordings.

He uses a likelihood ratio scale to determine the strength of his findings. His work is supposed to be carried out independently of the police who clearly have an interest in prosecuting the case. When giving his evidence, he supposedly is operating in the interests of the court and not for the prosecution per se.

I will deal with a number of glaring anomalies in his evidence so as to give a flavour of the Kafkaesque nature of the proceedings.

At the beginning of this process, the police supplied JPF with a package, e.g., suspect recording, reference samples, and a police transcript of the alleged conversation. According to French, it is not unusual to have a police transcript. However, it went even further in this case, because the expert was also provided with three names the police believed to be the suspects, and reference samples of the named individuals.

A short time after, his office contacts the police to ask for the names, addresses and dates of birth of the defendants. As if this was not enough, he had a number of meetings with the cops where the context of the covert conversation was openly shared. No contemporaneous notes or records of these meetings exists to inform the court of what took place at those meetings. Except for a few phone records there is nothing that can be scrutinised by the defence.

Furthermore, he was directed toward certain parts of the covert conversation which he was told to focus on for whatever purpose. All of this must impact his vaunted independence as an 'expert' in the eyes of the court. Cognitive bias is now recognised as an area of concern by judiciary everywhere. It has been identified as a potential contributor to miscarriages of justice

The importance of all of the above is that the CPIA, the act which outlines the guidelines for conducting investigations, requires a full, contemporaneous record to be made of every phone call, meeting, conversation, instruction, action, carried out by the prosecution, including expert witnesses. This is to ensure the transparency and accountability of the process from start to finish.

So far in this case countless MI5 and prosecution witnesses have failed to follow the guidelines and, instead, hide behind lack of recall and/or national security considerations. It's not good enough.

13-February-2020

I have just read John Cassidy's report on today's proceeding in the court. I am bemused by his lack of attention to detail and obvious omissions. He really should pay greater attention, or send a reporter who is better able to follow the evidence.

This is a farcical report that omits most of the important concessions made by the prosecution 'expert' witness under robust cross-examination. For example, Professor French conceded he and other colleagues conducted their analysis while consulting a police transcript that identified the names of three suspects, and attributed utterances to each. When asked whether he thought this was a good idea, French said that with hindsight he would not do it like that today, because of the potential for cognitive bias.

The witness admitted also ignoring proposals emanating from within his own practice on how best to avoid potential bias. These best practice proposals are now being incorporated into their methodology in order to improve the quality and integrity of the process.

On further probing the witness acknowledged general similarities within and between voices across the general population, and said that his conclusions have no scientific basis due to the absence of a statistical database.

What case was Cassidy listening to, may I ask? Perhaps he is operating under his own cognitive bias towards the defendants. In my opinion, the press have not been reporting this case fairly.

19-February-2020

We had two good days in court this week, Tuesday and Wednesday. Another voice 'expert' gave evidence on a second report that she conducted in 2017 at the behest of police. This was carried out almost 4 years after our arrest.

Why the need for a second report? Well, the answer to that question is very important in the context of the case. It was necessitated because the first 'expert', JP French, failed to distinguish between two voices in the reference samples supplied by the RUC-PSNI. The failure undermines the contention that voice analysis is an exact science.

In short form, Prof JP French confused the purported voice of Harry Fitzsimons with that of another named individual not involved in the case. Dr Kurchuble, a junior colleague of French, was instructed to compare the purported voice of Harry Fitzsimons with that of the other person for the purpose of exclusion. She produced a set of new findings, but she was unable to resolve the basic problem satisfactorily. In addition, she was asked to carry out a new report on all three defendants.

Under questioning she admitted to having been personally involved in the first analysis as a trascriber. She participated in a "collective listening exercise" of the covert recording along with other 'experts' and the police. By the time she came to do her analysis, she knew everything about the case including the names of 3 police suspects. Moreover, she had a the benefit of a police transcript which named the three suspects and attributed portions speech to each of them. All of this contextual and factual detail introduced the real potential for cognitive bias.

When pushed Dr Kurchuble admitted that the risk of cognitive bias was significantly higher in this case than any other she had been involved in. She accepted it is impossible to avoid a degree of bias once information and context is known; this applies equally to 'expert's. The fact she knew she was being asked to correct a mistake made by her boss was another potentially biasing factor.

Finally, Kurchuble concurred that her findings were "impressionistic" and "subjective" absent a statistical database of the relevant speaker population. The only database available to her was an academic study of 100 young male voices between the ages of 18 and 25 who attended Cambridge University. How. Now. Brown. Cow.

26-February-2020

Back in court today. A third expert witness for the prosecution gave his evidence during the morning session. Dr Philip Harrison is a phonetician-cum-acoustic technician employed by JP French Associate's based in York, England. It was in his role as a technician that he provided his evidence.
The evidence was technically complex in parts which is not my strong point. I will try to present an overview of the issues for the reader. Beneath the technical jargon is a crucial issue from the defence's perspective, i.e. the authenticity of the recordings. 

Harrison carried out an examination of a set of recordings supplied to him by the police. He was asked to comment technical aspects of the recordings in order to establish their authentic nature. Also, he was asked to compare the contents on a USB stick with the contents on 14 discs which form the evidence in the case. He concluded the material on both were identical and that they must have come from the original devices themselves. And here lies the crux of the argument. 

According to the cops the contents of the USB stick were directly downloaded from the devices via a computer. This process was carried out by an MI5 operator hours after the devices were retrieved. In line with MI5 procedure, the devices were wiped clean by the same person very soon after the downloading process, although he has no personal recollection of having done this, nor did he keep a contemporaneous note. There is conflicting evidence that the discs were produced before the USB, but again nobody knows by whom as there is no record.

The importance of this is the fact that the 14 discs handed to Harrison are described by the police as master tapes which, of course, they are not. It was argued by the defence that the 'master' would have to be what was recorded by the devices at the location. The USB and discs are copies of the covert recording obtained via a production process carried out by agents acting on instructions. Importantly, saying that the USB stick and the discs are identical is not to say they accurately represent what was captured originally. And since the devices were wiped clean it is now impossible to make that comparison.

But, this is only one aspect of the evidence.

This afternoon, the defence argued that in order to authenticate the recordings the state must show what occurred from beginning to end of the process. And that to seek to do this via expert evidence and witness statement alone does not reach the required threshold. Therefore, the only means by which this can be done would be to conduct a full authenticity test which is an entirely scientific method. And here is the punchline, that would require access to the devices and systems used to capture, store, and produce the evidence. However, in this case everything has been decommissioned and/or destroyed making such a test even more difficult to conduct. 

What does still exist are the devices themselves and/or a master-tape stored on a MI5 computer system which was also decommissioned during the life time of this case. How convenient!

Disclosure would allow experts for the defence and the prosecution to determine these matters in a transparent manner. This is where the battle lines are drawn after today.

This does not do justice (pun) to the proceedings and is a gist of today's evidence. Hopefully, it will help to inform.

4-March-2020

Another interesting day in court. PIN 4039, a technical manager in MI5, gave his evidence from behind a curtain, visible to the legal profession and cops only. His evidence was complex which makes it difficult to summarise for the casual reader. I will attempt to provide an overview without getting bogged down in the detail.

4039 was not involved in the investigation to begin with. For this reason, the judge raised a question about the admissibility of his evidence. This will be something the judge may rule on in the near future. 

This particular PIN was drafted in to address a crucial issue relating to the production path of the court exhibits. For the first 4 years of the case, it was purported by the prosecution that the evidence had passed through the MI5 computer system known as Marshbrook. This basically is a computer frame designed to gather, produce and store recordings stemming from covert operations.

The system has an intelligence side for use by analysts, and an evidential side for the production of an unimpeachable exhibit to be used in a prosecution. On the intelligence side, it is possible for analysts to view the data, and to interact with it in multiple ways, e.g., the data can be exported to another system, or altered, or edited, or deleted. On the evidential side, it is not possible to make any changes as the data is stored on magnetic discs and archived for any future prosecution.

As the direct result of defence disclosure requests, crucial gaps in the case opened up. For example, the Marshbrook system was decommissioned sometime in 2016 on legal advice. The more we probed into it, the more difficult it became to get information about the process involved. Other PINs in the case admitted to not having kept any contemporaneous records or notes detailing their respective roles in the process. 

Over the years, significant holes appeared in the continuity chain of the evidence. Enter 4039. He was tasked with review the production process in order explain what had occurred. He compared the USBs and discs and determined that they did not come from Marshbrook at all, except for one compilation disc. Today he was cross-examined about his findings pointing to an alternative production path. The problem he faced was that he had already misled the court in respect of Marshbrook.

As with the other witnesses, 4039 did not keep a contemporaneous record of the work he carried out. He claimed to have had spoken with s number of the key witnesses during his research. However, the witnesses in their own evidence said they did not speak with him at any time. When this was brought to his attention, he was lost for an explanation. Having no where else to go, he simply stuck to his guns. 

The prosecution are relying on 4039 to put the jigsaw back together. However, he can only go as far back as the production of the USBs and discs. What he can not speak to is what happened between the 6th and 8th December whenever two malicious viruses found their way onto the evidential court exhibits. He was central to creating the alternative production path so as to escape the shortcomings of the original prosecution narrative vis-a-vis Marshbrook.

Cross-examination resumes tomorrow.

5-March-2020

Today was our best day in court yet. Previously voice 'experts' for the state conceded that the voices on the recordings could not be said to be the three accused beyond opinion based assessments. Also, serious limitations in their methodology were revealed.

This week it was the turn of another key witness for the prosecution identified only by the cover PIN 4039. I posted a overview of his evidence yesterday last evening. 

Cross-examination of the witness resumed today. 

PIN 4039 was not personally involved in the investigation until much later when he was tasked to review the evidence in order to assess defence concerns vis-a-vis the continuity chain of evidence. 

The defence had identified a major gap in the production of the evidential exhibits, i.e. USB sticks and CD discs. In his original evidence he firmly believed the exhibits were produced by Marshbrook, an MI5 super computer used to gather, process, produce and store covert recordings. He believed this to be the case based on the witness statements of other PINs who attested to uploading and downloading the exhibits using Marshbrook.

Much later in 2018 when the defence drew the courts attention to serious discrepancies, 4039 reviewed his findings and, as a result, posited a completely different production path. As part of his review, he claimed to have spoken to several PINs who were directly responsible for producing the evidence via Marshbrook. However, most of these witnesses had no recollection of having met and/or spoken to 4039. 

At no time did 4039 consult Marshbrook for independent verification of what occurred, simply relying on other witness statements to explain events. Nor did he ever meet with a senior cop by the name of Hoskin who was responsible for the collection and management of all the evidence. On the contrary, he claimed not to have known of such a person. At no time did he contact anybody of the Marshbrook team in order to ascertain the facts.

Evidence was adduced today pertaining to a high level meeting which took place between several MI5 members (one being a rank below Deputy Director), and the two main PSNI investigating officers over the case on the very day that a court was told of the gaps in the continuity chain. Not a single person at the meeting took a note of what was discussed between them. When asked about the meeting, 4039 said it was to discuss the production path, as well as, to examine the USB sticks before they were shown to the defence the next day.

It was shortly after this meeting took place that 4039 began his review of the evidence and came up with the alternative production path. A convenient happenstance. When asked whether he had kept a full record of his research, 4039 said it was not common practice he would do that. Asked whether he understood the importance of keeping contemporaneous notes for the benefit of the court, he said that he never believed he would find himself in the position of giving evidence, and he would certainly note everything down in the future, he said.

Having been taken step-by-step through all of the conflicting evidence, in a thoroughly forensic manner, 4039 finally accepted the point that it was impossible to know what was done to the evidence before the USB sticks and discs were produced, because the devices were wiped clean either automatically or manually. He agreed also it would now be impossible to examine the laptop that was used to transfer the data from the devices to the USBs as that too was decommissioned/destroyed.

In the afternoon, it was suggested to 4039 he was being used by MI5 as a stooge in this case. He denied the suggestion. Furthermore, it was suggested to him MI5 was not the shambles it appeared to be in this instance, unless the mess it created was deliberate. He denied this too. He was asked whether he understood the impact of all this on the fairness of the trial. He said he was not a lawyer, but that it was very unfortunate.

Trial continues next week.


12-March-2020

Another two prosecution witnesses gave evidence today. The first was an expert on computer viruses. The long and short of his evidence was that two viruses which are present on two USB sticks were generic in nature date back to 2008 and 2010 respectively.

According to the expert, these viruses could only have been activated via an internet connection linking to a command server. However, his evidence could not account for what occurred before the USB sticks were created, i.e. he could not say whether the viruses were present on the actual recording devices themselves. Nor could be say for certain whether or not the viruses were used to alter the original data.

This afternoon a fourth voice 'expert' gave evidence in support of those who carried out the voice analysis. There is not much to say about this witness other than he was very poor. At one point the judge looked in our direction as he laughed at the pantomime unfolding. Even the prosecution was happy to see the witness discharged. I think his evidence added to the farce that is voice comparison analysis.

Now for the bad news. We lost two S8 applications today. This has been par for the course all throughout this case. Both issues will possibly be revisited in the future. It would be a lift were we to win an argument. This judge is hard to get by.


Alec McCrory is currently on trial in a British Diplock Court.

3 comments:

  1. I think this is an important perspective to detail, thank you for getting hold of it Anthony.

    However clearly written they are, the actual court processes always seem surreal with respect to republicans. Evidentiary aspects, the collection, storage and analysis of items crucial to the judgment are revealed to be unsound, yet can still be included.

    On a broader theme, it shows the regime in the North is not the rule of Law, that supporters of partition are often enthused to appear deferential to.

    Solidarity Alec.

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  2. Alex - good job. Very important to get this out and into the public record. You have a better grasp of it than the court journalists. This type of detail simply does not get out there.

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  3. Alex has added an update for today 12-March-2020

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