The Law vs. The Truth: Getting to the Bottom of the Richard D. Hall Case

Part 3 - The Summary Judgment

Part 3 - The Summary Judgment

This is the third in a a series of articles on the Richard D. Hall case. If you have not already done so, please read Part 1 and Part 2 first.

Introduction

Notwithstanding the large amount of forensic evidence discussed in Part 2, the truth regarding what took place in the City Room on May 22, 2017, was never up for debate in Hall’s trial in July 2024. For it had already been decreed in a Summary Judgment by Master Richard Davison on February 8, 2024, in which the following issues were, according to Steyn’s later Judgment, “found proved”:

a) On 22 May 2017 22 innocent people were murdered in a bomb explosion carried out by a terrorist at the Manchester Arena at the conclusion of a concert performed by Ariana Grande; b) The claimants were present at the Manchester Arena at the time of the bombing; c) They were severely injured rendering Martin Hibbert paralysed from the waist down and Eve Hibbert brain damaged; and d) The cause of these injuries was the explosion of the bomb.” [15]

Thus, Hall’s contention that there is no credible primary empirical evidence of a massive TATP shrapnel bomb having gone off in the City Room was not allowed to play any role in his defence. The official version of events was the only permissible version of events. 

In finding (a) to (d) above “proved,” Davison relied on four types of evidence:

1. Hashem Abedi’s conviction for 22 counts of murder in March 2020

2. Witness statements from Martin Hibbert and Terry Wilcox

3. An invoice for concert tickets

4. Medical evidence

Let us review each of these in turn. Owing to their relative importance, (1) is very long and (3) is very short compared to (2) and (4).  

The square brackets in this part refer to the relevant sections of the Summary Judgment unless otherwise indicated.

1. Hashem Abedi’s Conviction

In terms of (a), i.e., that 22 innocent people were murdered in a bomb explosion carried out by a terrorist at the Manchester Arena, Davison relies solely on the “obvious [...] fact” that Salman Abedi’s brother, Hashem Abedi, was convicted of 22 counts of murder in respect of the bombing, following “a six week trial at the Central Criminal Court (the Old Bailey) which concluded on March 17, 2020” [25]. This Davison regards as a “weighty piece of evidence” that Hall has “no ‘real prospect’” of disproving. He continues “I do not propose to engage with the detail of the defendant’s evidence” and he simply writes off Hall’s staged attack hypothesis as “absurd and fantastical.” 

This is hardly satisfactory from a neutral observer’s point of view. For example, the Abedi trial was not designed to question the official version of events. On the contrary, it was premised on the official account being true, the only question being whether Hashem Abedi was criminally complicit in the one event about which no doubts were raised (i.e., Salman Abedi’s detonation of a TATP shrapnel bomb). Logically speaking, therefore, the fact of Abedi’s conviction cannot act as proof that the official account is true. 

Applying the Law

On what legal basis does Davison’s finding that the Abedi trial constitutes a “weighty  piece of evidence” with “no real prospect” of overturning rest? 

That phrase refers to case law:

It was held in CXX v DXX [2012] EWHC 1535 (QB) that the effect of section 11 was that a criminal conviction was not merely a trigger for the presumption in subsection (2)(a) but “a weighty piece of evidence of itself” which, in that case, was not displaced by the defendant’s attack on the claimant’s credibility. [21]

“Section 11” here refers to section 11 of the Civil Evidence Act (1968). Paragraph 20 of the Summary Judgment states:

By s.11, Civil Evidence Act 1968 (“CEA 1968”):

11 Convictions as evidence in civil proceedings 

(1) In any civil proceedings the fact that a person has been convicted of an offence by or before any court in the United Kingdom or of a service offence (anywhere) shall (subject to subsection (3) below) be admissible in evidence for the purpose of proving, where to do so is relevant to any issue in those proceedings, that he committed that offence, [...]

(2) In any civil proceedings in which by virtue of this section a person is proved to have been convicted of an offence by or before any court in the United Kingdom or of a service offence— 

(a) he shall be taken to have committed that offence unless the contrary is proved; and 

(b) without prejudice to the reception of any other admissible evidence for the purpose of identifying the facts on which the conviction was based, the contents of any document which is admissible as evidence of the conviction, and the contents of the information, complaint, indictment.

To summarise the above in layman’s terms: someone who has been convicted of an offence in a UK court will be assumed to have committed that offence unless proven otherwise, and the fact of that conviction may act as “a weighty piece of evidence” in a civil trial.

What, then, is the legal significance of a “weighty piece of evidence”? The term originates in Stupple v Royal Insurance Co Ltd [1971] 1QB 50. The case concerned a bullion van robbery in which £87,308 was stolen. Four days later, the defendant was found with £1,050 in his flat and was eventually convicted (with others) of the robbery. However, he was able to trace the bank notes, casting doubt on his link to the robbery, and was successful, in a civil action, in recovering them from the claimant, who was unable to prove ownership of them. The judge (Paull) was troubled by the task of how the Court was supposed to weigh the criminal conviction in the balance of the evidence in the civil trial, in light of the new information. Did Section 11 merely create a rebuttable presumption of guilt (what if the defendant were innocent after all?), or was the conviction, in and of itself, evidence that could be deployed in civil proceedings?

At the Court of Appeal, these two opposing positions were developed by Buckley LJ and Lord Denning MR, respectively. Buckley argued that section 11(1) was merely a trigger for the presumption of guilt without any evidential weight in itself, whereas Denning argued that the conviction represented a “weighty piece of evidence of itself.”

It is easy to see both sides of the argument. On the one hand, any conviction is subject to new information later appearing which may potentially undermine it and should not, therefore, be regarded as infallible. On the other hand, the legal process is meant to be robust and should carry weight. Therefore, there is a grey area here, but it is easy to see why judges would prefer to side with Denning’s view, which implies that legal judgments should be treated as reflecting the truth unless they are overturned. Judges thereby become the arbiters of truth, rather than mere impartial appliers of the law to adjudicate between the claims of rival parties. The Court of Appeal judge (Winn) indeed sided with Denning. 

Returning, then, to CXX v DXX [2012] EWHC 1535 (QB), which is cited at [21] and [25] of Davison’s Summary Judgment against Hall, we find the judge (Spencer) also [at 39] siding with Denning’s 1971 position:

“I too prefer the approach of Lord Denning MR, for the reasons given by Moore-Bick J in Phoenix. These convictions in the present case must be treated as weighty evidence in themselves, and all the weightier in the light of the unsuccessful criminal appeal.”

Keep in mind that this was a subjective decision, which the judge took in full recognition of the opposing viewpoint, associated [at 37 and 38] with Buckley LJ and Stirling J. There is no single correct interpretation of the law here. Note, also, that Spencer J [at 51] bases his opinion on the defendant’s failure to win his Court of Appeal case, which rested on “independent evidence from three of the defendants colleagues, all doctors, which must have influenced the jury very heavily.” In other words, the judge’s preference for treating the criminal convictions as “weighty evidence” was not simply a matter of principle; it also relied on some compelling objective evidence behind the Court of Appeal’s decision.  

Now, contrast this with Davison’s characterisation of CXX v DXX [2012] EWHC 1535 (QB) as a case which “resolved a longstanding controversy about the evidential effect of a conviction” [25, my emphasis]. Clearly, it did nothing of the kind. That longstanding controversy cannot, in fact, be resolved, because both the Buckley and Denning positions will always be arguable, unless the law is “resolved” in the same way as the science of climate change is “settled,” i.e. through decree.

Davison also neglects to mention in his Summary Judgment that, in the supposedly momentous CXX v DXX judgment, which “resolved” a 41-year-long legal dispute, the victorious barrister for the Prosecution was none other than… Davison himself! So, not only is Davison [at 25] reading too much into that judgment, but he is also tacitly taking credit for a game changing moment in British legal history which appears to be nothing more than a figment of his imagination. 

When Davison [at 25] invokes CXX v DXX [2012] EWHC 1535 (QB) to claim that Hashem Abedi’s conviction constitutes a “weighty piece of evidence” that is single-handedly sufficient to overturn Hall’s entire evidence base, there is ample cause for suspicion. For example, the whole point of the “longstanding controversy” in law regarding the “evidential effect of a conviction” [25] is that it is always possible that new evidence will emerge that will undermine the original conviction. And the whole point of Hall’s research into the Manchester Arena incident is that he presents precisely such new evidence. 

Remember, when Spencer J, in CXX v DXX [2012] EWHC 1535 (QB), sided with Lord Denning MR’s contention, in Stupple v Royal Insurance Co Ltd [1971] 1QB 50, that a criminal conviction provides “weighty evidence” in a civil case, he did not do so on a whim, or because the longstanding tension between the positions advanced by Denning and Buckley in 1971 had been “resolved” in favour of Denning: rather, he was persuaded by evidence which, in the eyes of the Court of Appeal, amounted to a “formidable case” against the defendant. It was, therefore, reasonable to treat the defendant’s criminal conviction as evidence to be used in the civil trial. 

The same cannot be said of the conviction of Salman Abedi. As we will see in the “Sentencing Remarks” section below, the evidence base for the Abedi conviction is thin and the trial itself was peculiar, to say the least, with no defence having been offered. 

Furthermore, it is a fact that, during the summary judgment hearing, Hall presented Davison with sufficient primary empirical evidence to problematize the official version of events. Any reasonable person will see from that evidence that Buckley’s position in Stupple v Royal Insurance Co Ltd [1971] 1QB 50 is more appropriate than Denning’s when it comes to applying the law to the Hall case. In other words, it is more reasonable, in view of Hall’s evidence, to regard Abedi’s conviction as the trigger for the presumption of guilt without any evidential weight in itself, than as a “weighty piece of evidence of itself.” 

The Evidence Seen by Davison

Hall was successful, at the summary judgment hearing, in presenting to the court multiple pieces of primary empirical evidence which contradict the official claim that a massive TATP shrapnel bomb was detonated in the City Room. 

For example, he  was able to show the Barr footage showing Ruth Morrell appearing to walk normally despite later telling the Queen that a piece of shrapnel had shot “through 15 centimetres of my leg and out the other side.” Davison is on record as confirming that “I watched the video clip the other day.” 

Ruth Morrell in the Barr footage apparently walking unimpeded despite her injury, which was reported by ITV news in the top images. Source: Hall (2020, p. 49).

Hall told the Court:

Mr Hall: Yeah, so she [Morrell] can walk […] without a limp, placing […] her full weight on each foot. And also, you cannot see any hole in her jeans where the shrapnel is alleged to have entered and exited. 

Master Davison: Yeah. 

Hall noted that the Morrell injury is the only injury for which a closeup image is publicly available, “and it appears to be fake.” 

Hall also showed the Court an image of the merchandise stall:

Mr Hall: [...] Now the merchandise stall was within a few yards of where the [...] bomb was set off and in a direct line of sight of it, and we see it here. It is completely intact. This is a massive target. It is a large merchandise stall with cardboard and paper posters alongside of it. There is no discernible damage to it whatsoever, or the poster behind it. So I would contend that this image suggests that there was no real harmful explosive device used in that room. 

Composite image of the merchandise stall, taken from the Barr footage. Source: Hall (2020, p. 210).

Note the proximity of the merchandise stall to the alleged epicentre of the blast. Source: Hall (2020, p. 9).

Hall also highlighted the lack of building damage: “Throughout the John Barr video, there is little or no building damage.” 

A composite image from the Barr footage. Source: Hall (2020, p. 30).

Hall also drew attention to the fact that the CCTV footage does not indicate any obvious bomb damage:

Mr Hall: [...] The public inquiry released a number of CCTV photographs leading up to the time of the blast but, after the time of the blast, the images, especially in the City Room, were very heavily redacted so you have a picture of the City Room with just a little postage stamp of somebody in it, and it was all blacked out. But [...] by collating 14 or 15 of these postage stamp size images together, you can build up a mosaic, which is what I have done in this image. So, we have an image of the City Room after the blast and we see there is no discernible building damage. [...Furthermore,] You cannot see any blood on the floor. 

Composite imagery of CCTV stills taken from the Saunders Inquiry and pieced together by Hall. Source: Iain Davis

Similarly with the lack of broken glass, Hall was able to show the Court

a photograph of the glass doors leading into the arena, and this is taken shortly after [the detonation]. We can see the investigators in their white coats. And there is, there is no broken glass. None of the [...] glass doors have been shattered.

The glass doors leading into the City Room from Manchester Victoria Station were undamaged, despite officially being around 30 metres away from, and in direct sight of, a TATP shrapnel bomb. Source: Hall (2020, p. 33)

And also with the lighting, Hall observed: “The lighting is still working.”

The lighting is fully functional in the Chris Parker photograph taken approximately four minutes after detonation. Source: Hall (2020, p. 26).

By way of comparison, Hall showed the Court what the aftermath of a real terrorist bombing looks like:

Mr Hall: I have included, for comparison, an image of a real bomb. This is from Northern Ireland, from, from Omagh, which killed a similar number. See the devastation. 

The 1998 Omagh bombing, showing clear evidence of building damage. Source: Hall (2020, p. 33)

Hall additionally referenced the Bickerstaff video, correctly noting that “careful analysis of his video very, very strongly suggested it was filmed before the explosion” and that neither Bickerstaff nor his video featured at the Inquiry.

Nick Bickerstaff purportedly looking for his daughter in the aftermath of a terrorist attack in which he claims to have witnessed “people blasted to bits and half their bodies are everywhere.” No one around him seems to have noticed that a bomb has gone off, however.

In his Summary Judgment, Davison ignores all of this evidence, which was presented to him under oath at the High Court of Justice. He fails to mention the Barr footage, Ruth Morrell, the intact merchandise stall, the lack of building damage, the absence of shattered glass and broken lighting, the Omagh bombing, and the Bickerstaff video.

Instead, there are simply the following disparaging remarks: 

Alleged inconsistencies and anomalies in the publicly available evidence concerning the Manchester bombing have been put forward by the defendant at great length and in great detail in his book and other publications [not to mention in court]. Exhibit RDH 1 to his witness statement, running to approximately 100 pages, contains a section headed “Evidence which refutes the official Manchester narrative and justifies an independent investigation”. Sub-headings include “Type of explosive allegedly used”, “Lack of building damage”, “Apparently unharmed victims” and so on. I will not embark on a more detailed description. They all tend to the same conclusion, which is that the Manchester bombing was a staged and therefore fake event involving conspiracy on a grand scale orchestrated by malign UK government agencies and in which the (“recruited”) claimants were complicit. I will not repeat the epithets that I have already applied to this hypothesis. [38 (iv)]

So, Hall submitted approximately 100 pages of evidence to the Court and was able to highlight the above evidence during the summary judgment hearing. In contrast, Davison merely has the fact of Hashem Abedi’s conviction, a dubious assertion that the longstanding debate regarding the evidential effect of a conviction was “resolved” [25] in 2012 (implicitly thanks in part to his own role as barrister for the Prosecution in CXX v DXX), plus “epithets.” A hypothetical reasonable observer might well see Hall as being on much firmer evidential ground than Davison.  

The Sentencing Remarks on the Abedi Trial

Davison rules that the conviction of Hashem Abedi constitutes “‘a weighty piece of evidence’ in its own right” [25] – so weighty, in fact, that it outweighs Hall’s entire body of evidence that a TATP shrapnel bomb did not go off in the City Room.   

It is, therefore, reasonable to inquire into exactly what the Abedi trial uncovered, and how its findings were reached. According to Steyn in her final Judgment on Hall, Abedi’s trial took place “before Jeremy Baker J and a jury” [87] and “The judge’s sentencing remarks [...] reflect the findings of fact he made, applying the criminal standard of proof” [88]. Let us look, then, at those Sentencing Remarks. 

The “findings of fact” in Mr Justice Baker’s Sentencing Remarks turn out to be presented without any supporting evidence or rationale, meaning that the public has no way of knowing how those findings were reached based on information that has been officially released. 

According to the National Archives, Central Criminal Court case records “are not transferred to the National Archives until at least twenty years after trial and transfer may happen significantly later than this. As a rule of thumb, they remain with the court for seven years and are then transferred to storage with HM Courts and Tribunal Service.” So, whereas the 64-page Judgment for Hibbert & Anor. v Richard D Hall was publicly available the morning it was passed, it could take many years before the public gets to see the official records of the Hashem Abedi trial, if it ever does.    

Only three paragraphs of 40 in the Sentencing Remarks address what actually took place in the City Room on the evening of May 22, 2017. Paragraph 1 states: “[...] Salman Abedi, detonated an improvised explosive device which caused both himself and 22 fellow human beings to be killed whilst many others were very seriously injured.” Paragraph 14 states: “The cause both of the deaths and of the physical injuries to those who survived was due to the high velocity impact of the shrapnel which had been contained within the improvised explosive device prior [sic.] its detonation.” Paragraph 6 notes that the explosive used was Triacetone Triperoxide (TATP). 

Are we blindly to accept, on the basis of these three assertions, which are provided without supporting evidence, that this is a true and accurate account of what happened? The whole point of Hall’s research is that the forensic evidence is incompatible with a TATP shrapnel bomb. In which case, there is legitimate reason to question the accuracy of the Sentencing Remarks. We do not take the Sentencing Remarks as gospel.

The Sentencing Remarks for the Abedi trial read like the flawed 9/11 Commission Report insofar as they devote a lot of space to describing the alleged schemes of Muslim perpetrators leading up to a major terrorist attack, and relatively little space to what actually happened. The back story seems more important than the event itself: a narrative is presented in place of forensic evidence. 

The information in the Sentencing Remarks regarding when, where, and how the Abedi brothers sourced the components for their explosive device was, presumably, supplied by the intelligence agencies. It should not be forgotten, in that respect, that their father, Ramadan Abedi, is rumoured to have been a MI6 asset: both he and Salman Abedi are known to have been part of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, and the UK Government admitted it was “likely” still in contact with former members of that organisation despite it being banned in the UK. It would not be far-fetched, therefore, to suspect links to British intelligence when it comes to the Manchester Arena incident. 

What if the Abedi brothers were patsies, and what if certain intelligence shared with the Central Criminal Court during Hashem Abedi’s trial were deliberately false or misleading? In that case, his conviction would prove nothing regarding what really happened. Instead, it would be part of the cover up of what Davis calls “hoaxed false flag terrorism.” This is not to claim that the Abedi brothers definitely were patsies, or that such a cover up took place. It is merely to provide one additional reason, based on the known history of Western false flag terrorism (see pp. 92-96 and 111-114 of Wall Street, the Nazis, and the Crimes of the Deep State), why Hashem Abedi’s conviction cannot automatically be taken as proof of the veracity of the official account. 

The Manchester Evening News Report of the Abedi Trial

In seeking to find out how the jury reached its verdict in the Abedi trial, the most complete record of the trial that I know of is a long report by the Manchester Evening News (MEN). Although we cannot trust the media, the report goes into a lot of detail about what took place on each of the 29 days of the trial when the court was in session. It mostly focuses on the Abedi brothers’ alleged activities before May 22, 2017, with the Prosecution’s case largely resting on the narrative that the brothers had been sourcing components for a TATP shrapnel bomb in line with an infamous Islamic State video from late 2016 detailing how to construct precisely such a bomb. 

As we know from Hall’s research, however, the evidence that a TATP device was detonated in the City Room is weak. TATP, for instance, does not generate a flash or smoke, yet both can be seen in evidence relating to the City Room. Therefore, given the ISIS reference, it is reasonable to wonder whether, as with “9/11,” the “Islamic fundamentalist” narrative was being used to frame Muslim patsies. 

The MEN report describes the highly unusual circumstances relating to the fact that Hashem Abedi was absent for much of his own trial and presented no evidence in his defence, other than a prepared statement whose key points were summarised by Judge Baker on Day 26. Whilst the media presented Abedi’s behaviour as an admission of guilt, we should simply note that the jury, for whatever reason, did not get to hear a balanced presentation of the evidence. 

When it comes to what actually took place at the moment of the alleged blast, the long MEN report has just a few lines. It notes, correctly, that Salman Abedi was captured on CCTV in the City Room 19 seconds beforehand, but then bluntly asserts that “he detonated the device while standing in the middle of the foyer, killing himself and 22 others as well as seriously injuring dozens more.” This contradicts the evidence presented by Hall (2020, pp. 13-14) and Davis that Abedi was seen moving towards a different point, which was out of view of CCTV, setting down his rucksack, and then running away (see Part 2 of this series, “Forensic Evidence”).  

The MEN report adds that “The jurors were told horrific details of the life-changing injuries suffered by some of the 359 people.” Strictly speaking, therefore, the only evidence the report offers of a TATP shrapnel bomb having been detonated in the City Room are tales by an unspecified number of unidentified people regarding life-changing injuries. In forensic terms, this does not trump the primary empirical evidence adduced by Hall. 

2. Witness Statements From Martin Hibbert and Terry Wilcox

In terms of (a) to (c) referred to in Steyn’s Judgment above [at 15] — i.e., that the claimants were present in the Manchester Arena when they were severely injured by the bomb — Davison groups all three claims into a single category, which he assesses according to three types of evidence.  The first is witness statements provided by Martin Hibbert and Terry Wilcox.

According to a witness statement from Martin Hibbert confirming that he and Eve were present at the Arena, he was “able to review stills of the CCTV evidence” provided by Greater Manchester Police which “showed him and Eve immediately before the detonation of the bomb” [30]. Presumably as reason to accept the veracity of that witness statement, Davison cites “Mr Terry Wilcox, a solicitor who was instructed on behalf of two victims’ families, and who was able to review the CCTV footage on terms of strict confidentiality (because the footage was allegedly too graphic for public release)” [30]. Wilcox confirmed in a witness statement of his own that the Hibberts were “observed both before and after the detonation of the explosive device” [30[. 

As is noted in Steyn’s Judgment [20], that same Terry Wilcox is a Manager at Hudgell Solicitors, the firm that instructed Jonathan Price on behalf of the Hibberts. Therefore, there would appear to be an obvious conflict of interest here, which was not disclosed in the Summary Judgment. According to Davison,

Section 4 of the Civil Evidence Act 1995 sets out a list of factors to which a court may have regard when considering the reliability of such evidence and the weight to be attached to it. Those factors strongly favour Mr Wilcox’s evidence.

2(e) of Section 4, however, states that regard may be had to “whether any person involved had any motive to conceal or misrepresent matters.” If Wilcox was a Manager at the firm representing the Hibberts, then he clearly had a potential motive to misrepresent matters in his firm’s clients’ favour, all the more so given that Hudgell Solicitors represented a total of “89 survivors seriously injured in the attack.” This is not to claim that he did so, or that he acted unprofessionally in any way, simply that his witness statement cannot form a reliable basis for determining whether the alleged CCTV images actually exist, given the conflict of interest involved.  

In that context, it is interesting to review what was said during the summary judgment hearing:

Master Davison: But does not Mr Wilcox deal with this? He, he, he says, well: “I saw the relevant CCTV and I can confirm that they were there.” 

Mr Hall: Yes, he did say that in his statement, but that is not the same as producing the CCTV. 

Master Davison: Yeah, but he [...] cannot lawfully produce it [...]. 

Mr Hall: All right, well, you, as you know, I have submitted an application to try and get the CCTV released and I do not see any reason why that should not happen. 

Davison had the power to order that the relevant CCTV footage be released, but instead he chose to take Wilcox at his word.

As Hall told Davison at the time: 

It would be wholly unreasonable for the Court to accept [Wilcox’s testimony] as proof that the Claimants were there. The actual hard evidence is in what the moving CCTV images show, not in what the Claimant or Terry Wilcox says it shows. I am merely told about this evidence months after the Claimants made their claim. I have not seen it. They have had [...] over a year, My Lord, to come up with something. 

Hall’s point is particularly salient, given that the Hibberts do not feature in any of the 806 CCTV still images released by Greater Manchester Police, which were embedded across 4,100 pdf documents produced by the Saunders Inquiry. Nor do the Hibberts feature in any camera phone footage that was posted online, even though most of the 14,000 concert goers would have been using their camera phone. In other words, there is no publicly available photographic or CCTV evidence that they were even at the Ariana Grande concert. They had the opportunity to prove otherwise in court, but did not do so.

Martin Hibbert stated in his witness statement:

“In particular, there is a photograph timed at 20.03 which shows [...] even me [should be Eve and me] entering the City Room, and the photograph at 22.30, which shows us re-entering the City Room, after the concert, just before the explosion.”

Assuming that Hibbert here is referring to CCTV still images, rather than photographs, both are from before the bang and so cannot meet Davison’s criterion of being “too graphic for public release.” In particular, there seems to be no good reason why the alleged 20:03 photograph showing the Hibberts entering the City Room – nearly two and a half hours before the bang – should not have been released. This would have very strong evidence in the claimants’ favour.

3. Invoice for Concert Tickets

According to Davison, Hibbert provided the invoice for the concert tickets [30]. There is no comment, however, on whether the authenticity of that document was independently verified, e.g. by checking with the issuer. Rather, as throughout the Summary Judgment, Hibbert’s word remains unquestioned, and seemingly unquestionable. Even when there are inconsistencies in Hibbert’s account, Davison gives him the benefit of the doubt [38]. (The same is true of Steyn’s Judgment, which presents Hibbert as “undoubtedly an honest witness” [62] and as “honest and reliable” [214]). Assuming the invoice is genuine, it does not prove that the claimants were present or injured at the concert. 

4. Medical Evidence

According to the Summary Judgment, the claimants 

provided medical evidence in the form of medical reports from Mr BM Soni, who is Mr Hibbert’s treating consultant, dated 14 February 2020 and a short-form medical report from Dr Rajpura who is Eve’s GP. Both reports were produced for the purpose of the claimants’ claims to the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority. The reports describe the injuries sustained by the claimants. Mr Soni (who had access to the hospital medical records) ascribes the injuries to the bombing [32]

Let us deal with Martin and Eve Hibbert’s medical evidence in turn. 

Martin Hibbert’s Medical Evidence

Omitted from the Summary Judgment are Hall’s views on Soni’s report, expressed during the hearing:

Mr Hall: It is [...] not possible to know the timeframe of when the injuries occurred, by that report. It is written nearly three years after the incident and it [...] does not contain X rays or scans or images of any kind, therefore does not prove causation of the injuries.

This statement was made under oath and was not challenged by the Prosecution. We can therefore assume it to be factually accurate. Therefore, even though Soni ascribed the injuries to the bombing, his report provided insufficient evidence to support that ascription. 

If told by a highly publicised Hibbert that his injuries were sustained as a result of the bombing in the context of a Criminal Injuries Compensation claim, would Soni necessarily have been willing to contradict that claim? Might he have been struck off for challenging the official version of events? As the Covid era has demonstrated, that is what happens to doctors who do not toe the line.

Why would Soni’s report, which Prosecution barrister Price described as “very detailed” (50 pages long), omit such fundamental information as “X rays, scans, or images of any kind”? An official time-stamped X-ray showing multiple pieces of shrapnel embedded in Hibbert’s body, for instance, would provide irrefutable evidence that he was injured by Salman Abedi’s TATP shrapnel bomb in the City Room on May 22, 2017. 

Strangely, although no such X-ray was contained in the medical evidence provided to the Court, one did appear in a LADbible report on the first anniversary of the Manchester Arena incident:

“Martin Hibbert,” reads the LADbible caption.

Hibbert told LADbible:  

I had two seven-hour operations to remove the nuts and bolts. My feet, legs, arms and jaw were all smashed. One had severed my spinal column. My throat had a part missing. There was one bolt in my face they couldn’t get but it eventually rose to the surface and broke the skin itself. I tweezered it out. I keep it in a jar.

Yet, there is no obvious damage to the arms, throat, or jaw, or of shrapnel embedded in the face, in the above X ray. Nor is the image time-stamped, nor does it identify Martin Hibbert. Moreover, as Hall told the Court,

It cannot be deduced from the X ray, without a lateral view, whether the alleged shrapnel is inside the body, or not. The shrapnel could be on top of the body, underneath the body or possibly even using computer software.

In sum, there is no reason to trust the authenticity of the image. 

Tellingly, the claimants did not enter the LADbible X-ray into evidence. They must have known that it would not withstand scrutiny. In which case, why did Martin Hibbert authorise its usage in the first place? 

Why was the Soni report the only medical evidence provided by the claimants in relation to Martin Hibbert? There should have been plenty of better medical evidence available, e.g. evidence of admission direct from the Salford Royal hospital, where Hibbert claims to have been treated, or a letter from his hospital consultant to his GP soon afterwards, or a letter to Hibbert soon afterwards from either his consultant or GP. Yet, as Hall pointed out during the hearing on January 29, 2024, no such evidence was provided, despite him having requested “strict proof of the time and place of the injuries” in his letter to the claimants dated January 11, 2023, i.e., over a year earlier.  

Although most claims made to the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority are assessed within 12 months, the Summary Judgment and the hearing transcript do not mention whether or not the claimants were successful in their claim for compensation. An award letter would have been an obvious form of evidence that the claimants could have submitted to show that the state had already accepted their criminal injuries claim. But, for some reason, they did not do so.

Eve Hibbert’s Medical Evidence

Eve Hibbert was one of two claimants against Hall, who, over a year before the hearing, had requested “strict proof of the time and place of [their] injuries.”

Instead of providing that proof, however, all that was forthcoming in the case of Eve was “a short-form medical report from Dr Rajpura who is Eve’s GP,” which was “produced for the purpose of the claimants’ claims to the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority” [32]. The definition of “short-form” is not given in the Summary Judgment, nor is the date of the report, nor are there any further details in relation to Eve’s injuries and how they were sustained. Again, we do not know whether or not the Hibberts were successful in their criminal injuries application, but if they were, then they would likely have adduced proof of that in their evidence.  

Davison’s Summary Judgment notes that “The GP report is silent on causation of Eve’s injuries” [32]. Therefore, how could it have been useful in the criminal injuries claim? And how could it be useful in the claim against Hall? 

Having seen the GP report, Hall chose not to contest the fact that Eve had sustained injuries. Indeed, he did not question the medical evidence in relation to Eve, a vulnerable person, at all. 

Nevertheless, it is worth remembering how the Prosecution dealt with that evidence. Price was quick to assert that “the challenge to Eve’s credibility and that of her mother is virtually non existent.” In other words, one party is simply beyond reproach. Whilst this may be true of Eve, who was rightly kept out of proceedings, it does not follow that any challenge to Sarah Gillbard’s credibility is “virtually non-existent.” Gillbard is an adult, legally representing her daughter, and is open to the same kind of legal challenge as any other responsible adult. 

Price then told the Court that the reason why Gillbard had submitted a “short form medical report” was because the “purpose in the proceedings” was to stop Hall’s alleged invasion of their privacy; a full medical report would not only thereby become available to Hall, but discussion of it in the hearing would also be publicly recorded. So, while acknowledging the principle of open justice, Gillbard was “knowingly putting before the Court relatively restricted medical evidence, knowing there is a risk that the Court will not find it sufficient but trusting that the Court will.”

On the one hand, this logic is understandable from the Prosecution’s perspective, but, from the Defence’s point of view, it amounts to nothing more than “trust me.”

Apparently anticipating this objection, Price argued that the medical evidence produced in relation to Eve was “sufficient when read in conjunction with the other evidence in the case.” That “other evidence” includes 

Eve’s participation in the concerts and the events and the blast and subsequently and then the evidence confirmed by Mr Hibbert about the, about the evidence of the inquiry, which actually discusses Eve in some detail, which he has set out in his witness statement. We say this is sufficient to establish, again in the general terms required on this application, that Eve suffered such significant injuries she nearly died in the arena.

To be clear, Price is arguing here that “sufficient” evidence of Eve sustaining life-threatening injuries on May 22, 2017, is provided by the fact that she “participated” in “the events and the blast,” as confirmed by her own father, who just so happens to be the other claimant. The logic is circular.   

Nevertheless, Davison states in his Summary Judgment:

The GP report is silent on causation of Eve’s injuries. But Martin Hibbert’s witness statement confirms how she came by those injuries and the claimants have also provided a witness statement dated 16 November 2023 from Eve’s mother, Sarah Gillbard, providing the same confirmation. [32] 

Gillbard was legally representing Eve. Therefore, what Davison is really saying here is that Eve can be assumed to have sustained her injuries in the manner claimed, simply because both of her parents (essentially, the two claimants) claim she did! This is anything but the impartial delivery of justice. 

While Hall was suspected of seeking to promote his “financial interests” [22, iv] for “commercial gain” [see 13, 189, 203 of Steyn’s Judgment], even though he made Manchester: The Night of the Bang freely available online, not once does it cross the minds of Davison and Steyn that Hibbert and Gillbard might also have a financial motivation, namely the £50,000 in damages that they were suing for. So it would appear that the two parties were not treated evenly in this regard. 

On Method

During the hearing, Prosecution barrister Price primed the Court to be dismissive of Hall’s contention that Salman Abedi drove off in a getaway vehicle after planting his rucksack device, by referring to “something about a grey Audi” and linking it rhetorically to “not sufficiently coherent or concerted pieces of doubt.” Characterizing Hall’s view on the Audi, which is supported by leaked police communications from that night, as “pure speculation,”  Price made the following argument:

For just a small example of the vice in the Defendant’s position, he works from these vagaries and inconsistencies to a position of a little bit of doubt and then starts speculating but, of course, leaves behind the hundreds of eyewitness accounts, actual testimony of people who were there, real experiences of those who were bereaved and, of course, the lifelong injuries of my clients. And the only way his little doubts and inconsistencies can turn into a verifiable theory as far as he is concerned is to conclude that all of those people are lying. 

The real methodological vice, however, lies in the refusal of both Price and Davison to acknowledge any of Hall’s primary evidence, which was presented under oath to the High Court of Justice. 

The straw man invented by Price is that Hall began with “a little bit of doubt” that led to “pure speculation” and ultimately an irrational belief that all of the hundreds of eyewitnesses were lying.

In reality, Hall worked from primary empirical evidence (see Part 2), virtually all of which has been systematically suppressed by the British justice system, to conclude that there was no bomb, and thence to asking additional questions. At no point did Hall dispute the veracity of many ordinary eyewitness accounts. On the contrary, as he argued at trial, “because of the nature of the event, that it was made to look very realistic, many of the statements are true.” 

Conclusion

In order to accept Davison’s Summary Judgment, it is necessary to accept:

1. that the fact of Hashem Abedi’s conviction alone, in a trial that was not intended to challenge the official version of events, is sufficient to establish the veracity of that version of events, even though all the public has to go on are three bald assertions of fact in the Sentencing Remarks, one of which is that a TATP device was detonated, contrary to the primary evidence presented by Hall and Davis;

2. that witness statements by Martin Hibbert and Terry Wilcox, whose firm claims to have represented “89 survivors seriously injured in the attack,” are sufficient to establish the presence of Martin and Eve Hibbert at the Manchester Arena on May 22, 2017, notwithstanding the apparent conflicts of interest;

3. that a ticket invoice is sufficient evidence to establish that the Hibberts actually attended the concert; 

4. that a medical report 33 months after the event, which ascribes, yet does not prove, causation of Martin Hibbert’s injuries, is sufficient to establish that Hibbert sustained his injuries on May 22, 2017, and that a GP report which is “silent on causation of Eve’s injuries” [32], plus witness statements from Eve’s parents (effectively the two claimants) are sufficient to establish that her injuries were sustained that same night. 

Readers must make up their own minds how plausible these four claims are. Personally, I think that primary scientific evidence rules out (1), that conflicts of interest rule out (2) and (4), and that (3) is self-evidently ridiculous. 

Yet, for Davison, “The combination of the evidence described above more than satisfies the burden on the claimants to produce credible evidence in support of their application for summary judgment [...]” [33]. To think otherwise is not merely “unrealistic” but “preposterous” [37]. All the empirical evidence presented by Hall, grouped under such headings as “Type of explosive allegedly used,” “Lack of building damage,” “Apparently unharmed victims,” etc., does not “cast any serious doubt” on the claimants’ evidence [38]. Moreover, the claimants’ evidence is so strong that Hall has “no prospect at all” of successfully contesting it [39].

It was on these dubious grounds that the Summary Judgment was resolved in favour of the Hibberts.