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

Part 8 - Implications for the Independent Media

Part 8 - Implications for the Independent Media

This is the eighth in a nine-part series on the Richard D. Hall case. If you have not already done so, please read the other parts first:

Introduction

In the first seven parts of this series, it has been established that an innocent man has been found guilty by the High Court of Justice. There is no credible evidence that Richard D. Hall is guilty of harassment, or that he abused media freedom. The Judgment against him relies on burying key evidence, suppressing the truth, and fallacious appeals to authority. Martin Hibbert was not a reliable witness, and any anxiety and distress caused to the claimants was demonstrably not Hall’s fault.

The final instalments of this series turn attention to what the trial of Richard D. Hall was really about, given that it was patently not about justice. This part argues that the verdict against Hall was about disciplining the independent media in the UK.

The Attack on the Independent Media vs. ECHR Article 10

Citing Warby J in Sube v News Group Newspapers Ltd [2020] EWHC 1125 (QB), [2020] EMLR 25, Steyn emphasises that potential abuses of media freedoms are “not limited to journalism emanating from the mainstream press” [161]. Citing Aidan Eardley KC in Sledziewski v Persons Unknown [2024] EWHC 1955 (KB), she adds that journalism “extends to citizen journalism of the type engaged in by bloggers,” and includes Hall’s publications in that category [161].

Davis observes that the Online Safety Act 2023 [OSA] is targeted precisely at citizen journalists (the independent or alternative media), while “the legacy media gatekeepers of news and information are protected by the OSA,” not least because their role is to promote and adhere to official narratives.

In the context of the current drive to discipline the independent media, one obvious hurdle to be overcome is Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), which protects the right to freedom of expression.

Davis proposes that the Judgment against Hall was intended to set a case law precedent that will make it easier in future for Article 10 to be overridden when it comes to prosecuting independent media outlets or individuals for challenging what he calls “the Establishment’s official stories.”

Remember, no media entity in the UK had ever been found guilty of harassment before [162]. Harassment constitutes a violation of ECHR Article 8 (respect for private and family life). Now that the legal precedent has been set, it will be easier in future to invoke Article 8 to override Article 10 [177-178].

More importantly, perhaps, the Judgment serves as a sign of intent that the state is willing to use lawfare, however egregiously, to attack any independent journalist who comes too close to exposing covert state crime. The mere fact of the Judgment acts as a deterrent against real investigative journalism in that sense.

Hall’s Article 9 Defence

We saw in Parts 4, 5, 6, and 7 that Hall’s conduct did not constitute a credible violation of the claimants’ Article 8 rights, or an abuse of media freedom. Hall was perfectly within the law to behave as he did, notwithstanding the evident twisting of the facts in the Judgment.

Hall additionally pleaded that his Article 9 rights (to freedom of thought, belief, and religion) were relevant [163]. Article 9(1) states:

Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief, in worship, teaching, practice and observance.

Defence barrister Oakley, in his skeleton argument and in court, appealed to Grainger Plc v Nicholson [2010] ALL ER 253 to bolster Hall’s Article 9 defence through relevant case law. This, however, was a mistake.

The second of the five so-called Grainger criteria arising from that case stipulates that, for a philosophical belief to qualify as a protected characteristic under the Equality Act 2010,

It must be a belief and not [...] an opinion or viewpoint based on the present state of information available.

In the Judgment, Steyn cites multiple instances in which Hall has expressed his willingness to change his views if new evidence comes to light and, on that basis, reasonably concludes that the second Grainger criterion has not been met [179].

The problem with invoking Grainger and protected characteristics under the Equality Act 2010 is that, whereas Article 9 leads with “freedom of thought,” Section 10(2) of the Equality Act states that

belief means any religious or philosophical belief.

Thus, the Equality Act, and hence Grainger, have a narrower field of application than Article 9.

Clearly, Hall’s views on Manchester do not constitute a religious or philosophical belief, but, rather, a carefully derived conclusion based on rigorous analysis of primary forensic evidence. Therefore, it counts as a scientific, rather than a philosophical, belief. This seems compatible with Article 9’s “freedom of thought,” even though it does not meet the second Grainger criterion.

Despite Burton J’s conclusion in Grainger that science-based beliefs such as Darwinism may qualify as philosophical beliefs, the whole point of the scientific method is that all theories must be open to being modified or rejected if contradicted by evidence. Therefore, as Keith Patten observes, “All scientific beliefs are […] beliefs based on the present state of the evidence and not fixed and so susceptible to failing the second Grainger criterion.” Which implies that no scientific belief can be protected under the Equality Act 2010.

To see how ridiculous this is, consider that the second Grainger criterion was formulated based on McClintock v Department of Constitutional Affairs [2008] IRLR 29, in which “the claimant agreed that a view he held now (on same-sex couples adopting) might change on receiving further evidence on children’s outcomes” [163]. As Gwyneth Pitt has argued, McClintock “would have been better off as an out-and-out bigot,” since “a stupid, but sincere, belief, based on nothing at all, is within the scope of the protection, but an opinion based on logic and information is not.”

Thus, the Grainger criteria, which were an early attempt to put some legal flesh on the bones of the Equality Act 2010, are in certain respects nonsensical, as Patten has also established. Those criteria, therefore, are not a worthwhile test of the applicability of Article 9.

According to Article 9(2),

Freedom to manifest one’s religion or beliefs shall be subject only to such limitations as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society in the interests of public safety, for the protection of public order, health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.

Thus, Hall has the right to freedom of thought as per Article 9(1), and is free to manifest his beliefs subject only to the limitations described above. The test should not be whether Hall’s beliefs meet the Grainger criteria, but, rather, whether Hall’s manifestation of those beliefs violates any of those limitations. It should be evident from Parts 4, 5, 6, and 7 that it does not.

Two Defences Under the Protection From Harassment Act

Two further defences mounted by Hall draw on sections 1(3)(a) and (c) of the 1997 Protection from Harassment Act, i.e., that

• the purpose of his conduct was “preventing or detecting crime”; and that

• “in the particular circumstances the pursuit of the course of conduct was reasonable.”

As Davis notes, these two defences are “absolutely essential for investigative journalists,” since without them, “every time a journalist investigates a story exposing wrongdoing, the subject of their investigation — corrupt politicians or judges, for example — could prosecute them for harassment.”

Nevertheless, Steyn rules that “Mr Hall has failed to establish that he can avail himself of either of the defences on which he has relied” [213]. Let us, then, consider each defence in turn, to assess whether that is really the case.

Hall’s Defence of Detecting or Preventing Crime

The Protection Against Harassment Act (s.3.1.a) states that a course of conduct “pursued for the purpose of preventing or detecting crime” does not constitute harassment.

It should be self-evident that Hall’s research into the Manchester Arena incident, like his previous research into false flag terrorism, is intended to detect covert state crime with a view to preventing its recurrence.

As if any further evidence of intent to detect crime were necessary, given the extensive forensic evidence Hall has presented in his publications, he immediately sent copies of his book to the chairman of the Manchester Arena Inquiry plus four counsel to the chairman [132]. He evidently wanted his research to make an impact, and trusted that the Inquiry would look honestly at the only book-length forensic investigation of the incident available. Instead, the Inquiry ignored him.

Hall wrote to the claimants on January 11, 2023, “I also believe that my actions could ultimately help prevent a crime. That crime being fraud and the mis-use of public funds” [39]. These are legitimate purposes of investigative journalism, and the evidence which Hall has presented means that there are reasonable grounds for suspecting that public funds were indeed diverted into an operation used to deceive the public, and could be again.

Nevertheless, Steyn rejects Hall’s prevention/detection of crime defence for several reasons. First, “the only offences he identified as relevant are those created by s.35(2) and (3) of the Inquiries Act 2005” [205]. Both sections begin “A person is guilty of an offence if during the course of an inquiry […].” Thus, those offences appear to relate to witnesses allegedly misleading the Inquiry, rather than to the crime of staging a terrorist attack, which would be necessary for Hall’s defence under PHA s.3.1.a. Hall made no reference to s.35(2) and (3) of the Inquiries Act 2005 in his witness statement, hence he was not cross-examined on it by Prosecution barrister Price, who described his pleading as “insufficient.” Steyn finds that “Mr Hall has given no evidence that [prevention or detection of crime] was even a purpose of his, still less his dominant purpose” [206].

Why did Hall not plead the obvious, namely, that he had sought to detect and prevent crime by conducting a detailed forensic investigation into an apparently staged terrorist attack? Here again, the pernicious Summary Judgment rears its ugly head. Hall was not allowed to plead what was self-evidently the case, because it had already been decreed as legally incontestable “fact” that the only crime committed in the City Room on May 22, 2017, was the one committed by Salman Abedi. If Hall was not investigating that crime, then it was “impossible” that he was investigating any other, such as staged false flag terrorism.

As for Hall sending copies of his book to the Inquiry, Steyn dismisses this as evidence of intent to detect or prevent crime on the basis that Hall did not thereby draw attention to any potential offence under the Inquiries Act 2005 [206]. This is unfair. Had the Inquiry done an honest job, rather than ignoring Hall’s evidence, it should not have needed to be specifically instructed that an offence had been committed. It is obvious that Hall was trying to direct the Inquiry’s attention towards evidence of a crime by submitting his book. In a just world, the Inquiry would have followed up on Hall’s work, rather than omitting and distorting key evidence (see Part 6).

“Other than sending the Book to the Inquiry,” Steyn rules, “there is no evidence that Mr Hall sought to draw any [pre-Inquiry] publications to the attention of anyone with responsibility for investigating or prosecuting crime” [207]. That is irrelevant, however. Hall did send his major work on the Manchester Arena incident to the Inquiry for the purpose of preventing and detecting crime.

Showing the Court Evidence of a Crime Scene

Despite not being able to plead the PHA s.3.1.a prevention/detection of crime defence, Hall repeatedly referred to the City Room as a “crime scene” during his trial. At one point, Oakley read from Hall’s first witness statement:

The video [the Barr footage] is very important evidence because it shows the crime scene in high definition very shortly after the time the device was set off. There is far more detail of the crime scene within this video, than was produced in the subsequent public [i]nquiry.

Steyn’s response to this was to insist on “referring to the crime scene in relation to a crime which is committed by Mr Abedi.” Once more, the Summary Judgment took precedence, and when Oakley hinted at this “unfortunate consequence,” Steyn replied bluntly “We are where we are, basically.”

Nevertheless, Hall managed to achieve something spectacular, namely, getting Steyn and Price to look at an image of the merchandise stall in the City Room, despite all previous attempts to censor primary forensic evidence from the trial. Hall told Steyn:

You can see clearly it is completely intact, four minutes after the device was set off. So, at that point in time, due to this evidence and lots of other witness statements which contradict the official narrative of what [...] is seen in the primary evidence, it was in the public interest to examine this.

Steyn simply omits this evidence from the Judgment. She is on record as having looked at the intact merchandise stall with her own eyes, yet she acted to suppress all knowledge of it.

The image of the merchandise stall shown by Hall to Steyn. A massive TATP shrapnel bomb detonated six metres away apparently impacted the people in front of the stall but not the stall itself or the massive poster behind it. Source: Iain Davis.

Oakley did not give up, however, later reminding Steyn that Hall had been “able to direct the Court” to an image captured four minutes after the alleged blast, showing the merchandise stall completely intact, contrary to the statement of Josie Howarth in the media that “the next thing I know, there was an explosion and the merchandise stall blew to pieces.”

For that reason, Oakley told Steyn, “we are not conceding the point about the prevention or detection of crime.” He proposed that Hall “go back in the witness box” for further cross-examination on the issue, something which Hall was willing to do, but after consulting with Price, Steyn found no “basis” for doing so.

The next day, Oakley revisited that moment:

Mr Oakley: I suggested that Mr Hall go back into the witness box where he could be cross-examined on this very point, but my learned friend declined to do so. The issue has been raised. The Claimants had every opportunity to cross-examine Mr Hall about it. They declined that opportunity, so I would say in the round the criminal defence must succeed because it has not been challenged.

This is critically important. Given that Hall was able to show the court unchallenged evidence that the merchandise stall, located six metres away from an alleged TATP shrapnel bomb, remained completely intact post-detonation, the court implicitly accepted that evidence. In which case, there is undisputed evidence of a crime involving deception around the alleged bomb, and Hall was self-evidently engaged in detecting that crime. This constitutes a legitimate defence against harassment under PHA s.3.1.a, and it follows that Hall should have been acquitted.

Hall’s Defence of Reasonable Course of Conduct

According to section 1(3)(c) of the Protection from Harassment Act, “in the particular circumstances the pursuit of the course of conduct was reasonable,” then it does not constitute harassment.

Hall wrote to the claimants on January 11, 2023, stating his belief that his actions were “reasonable in the particular circumstances” [39].

The idea of “reasonableness” in the Judgment has already been explored in a separate context in Part 4. The reasonable course of conduct defence, however, relates specifically to paragraphs 209-213 of the Judgment, and it is those paragraphs which will be discussed in this section.

The Judgment recognises that Hall sought to gather as much evidence as possible in support of his staged attack hypothesis:

Mr Hall has gathered and scrutinised every image of and statement made by the families of the deceased and the surviving victims, including the claimants, that he has been able to find. He has gathered and scrutinised any publicly available footage of the Attack, statements of emergency responders and other witnesses, as well as other materials such as police radio communications. He sought to obtain information from Mr Hibbert and Ms Gillbard directly, albeit his message did not reach Mr Hibbert and he was unable to speak to Ms Gillbard during his visit. [209]

The question then is: does this constitute reasonable behaviour? Clearly it does if Hall was onto something — if the primary evidence he had uncovered provided cause for further investigation.

Because of the Summary Judgment, however, the legitimacy of Hall’s endeavours is not recognised by Steyn: “the falsity of Mr Hall’s publications is a significant factor in assessing the reasonableness of his course of conduct” [210].

Because Hall’s primary empirical evidence was not allowed to feature in his trial, Steyn can simply write off his claims as “false” and “grave,” as leading to a “very large number of people” being “misinformed,” and as lacking in any “semblance of balance” [211].

The real lack of balance, however, was to be found in a trial in which one side was not allowed to present its key evidence, resulting in the public being misinformed that the issue of what took place in the City Room on May 22, 2017, has been definitively settled. The uncontested lack of damage to the merchandise stall is just one piece of evidence indicating that the TATP shrapnel bomb narrative is false.

In a fallacious appeal to authority, Steyn claims that Hall maintains his position “despite the Attack having been the subject of thorough investigations, a criminal trial, and authoritative reports which any reasonable person would recognise command respect” [211].

Any reasonable person, knowing that the Kerslake Report placed the circumstances surrounding deaths and injuries “out of scope,” knowing that no defence was offered in the Hashem Abedi trial, and knowing that the Saunders Inquiry suppressed and distorted evidence (see Part 6), would not automatically defer to those sources as authoritative.

According to Steyn, “To the extent that the claimants’ side of the story is presented, it is for the purpose of deriding it and often of mocking those who suffered so terribly on the night of 22 May 2017” [211].

No evidence is provided in support of this false assertion — no examples of Hall engaging in this kind of behaviour, no reference to a previous paragraph in the Judgment, etc. The terms “mock” and “deride” feature neither in the rest of the Judgment, nor in the trial transcript, save in relation to mock terror drills.

In a further attempt to demonstrate Hall’s lack of reasonableness, Steyn returns to Hall’s use of statement analysis, which she finds “feeble and spurious,” resenting the fact it was applied to “a deeply personal (albeit public) account given by Mr Hibbert of what he thought at the time were his and his daughter’s dying moments” [211].

Whatever one thinks about statement analysis — and it is used in various jurisdictions outside the UK, e.g. by the FBI — it was not Hall’s primary method. Analysing the primary evidence from the crime scene came first, but that entire body of evidence was effectively rendered inadmissible by the flawed Summary Judgment.

Hibbert’s Campaign to Criminalise the Questioning of State Narratives

The significance of the verdict against Hall is that, with the independent/alternative media under attack, every available legal defence was stripped away from him. He could not rely on his Article 9 or Article 10 rights, nor could he rely on either of the defences afforded by the Protection from Harassment Act 1997, i.e., preventing or detecting crime and engaging in a reasonable course of conduct. This is a clear indication that lawfare, defined as “the strategic use of legal proceedings to intimidate or hinder an opponent,” is now being used to discipline the alternative media.

In that context, Hibbert’s words in his third witness statement should chill the bones of any right-thinking person:

In December 2022 I reached out to Manchester’s mayor, Andy Burnham, to discuss campaigning for a new law to better protect survivors of tragedies from harassment and conspiracy theories. I live in hope that before too long it will be a criminal offence for people like Mr Hall to make money from conspiracy theories, especially in relation to terrorist attacks or atrocities.

Hibbert here is not presenting evidence against Hall, but, rather, advancing a political agenda in anticipation of his victory in court. He wants to use the law to stop people questioning the official account of terrorist attacks. One can only infer that the official account is, in certain cases at least, not robust enough to withstand scrutiny and requires additional protection and reinforcement. Otherwise, hard evidence would be enough to deal with “people like Mr Hall.”

No sooner had the Summary Judgment been resolved in the claimants’ favour on February 8, 2024, than Hibbert appeared, the very next day, on ITV’s Good Morning Britain. In the middle of an ongoing legal case about which he should not publicly have been allowed to allege wrongdoing without right of reply, Hibbert spoke about his relationship with the mayor of Manchester. He claimed that if he emerged victorious against Hall, then he would work with Burnham to push for the creation of a new criminal offence that would make it illegal to question any account by a reported victim of a terrorist attack.

As Davis observes, such a law would “ensure that no investigative journalist can ever question State narratives about terror events.” Moreover, once on the statute books, it is likely that the application of such a law would be expanded over time to prevent the questioning of any official narrative where it is claimed that someone was “harmed.” This could include murder, for example. Under the UK Covert Human Intelligence (Criminal Conduct) Act (2021), 14 government agencies already have the mandate to commit crimes with impunity under certain conditions. If it becomes illegal to investigate, or even publicly suspect, the role of those agencies in relation to crimes committed, then the result is a police state.

In a prepared statement delivered after the conclusion of the trial, Hibbert claimed:

We shouldn’t have to face such allegations that the Manchester Arena attack never happened, and that our injuries were not as a result of the bombing — we certainly shouldn’t have needed to be here in court to make a stand and to protect others from this kind of behaviour.

Despite emerging victorious from a harassment trial, there is nothing about harassment (i.e., unreasonable and persistent behaviour calculated to cause anxiety and distress — see Part 4) in this passage. Rather, Hibbert here is seeking to exercise a censorship function: the official account of the Manchester Arena incident must not be questioned. The language of “protecting others,” horribly reminiscent of the “Covid-19” operation, performs the same propaganda function as it did in 2020, i.e., to shut down all forms of critical thinking and discussion.

After winning his case against Hall, Hibbert told the press that he wants to bring in “Eve's Law”:

Eve's Law could well be the access to justice for people. We have seen what it cost for me to do this. You are looking at £260,000. It's impossible for anyone to afford that so I am thinking a panel of pro bono barristers that can help the public to take these people down. (my emphasis)

Notwithstanding the obvious irony of Hibbert using victory in a case supposedly about protecting his daughter’s privacy to push for a law named after her, we might wonder why he claimed that it is “impossible for anyone” to afford £260,000? Had he himself not just done so? More on this in Part 9.

Presumably, Eve’s Law will incentivise those claiming victimhood in a terrorist incident to sue anyone who questions their account — potentially easy money now that the legal precedent has been set. As Kerry Gillespie, of Hudgell Solicitors stated, “Martin and Eve have set a precedent which will hopefully see more people who engage in this sort of behaviour challenged." Which would be good business for Hudgell’s.

Unless such machinations are called out, there will be no more investigative journalism in the UK seeking to expose suspected “hoaxed” false flag terrorism. If such operations have indeed been taking place, and if they continue to take place, they will not be reported on, and the uninformed public will not believe them to be possible, in spite of the evidence that Hall produced.

Criminalising such journalism will not be necessary, provided investigative journalists understand, based on the verdict against Hall, that there are certain topics which they simply must not touch. Still, the trajectory towards the criminalisation of dissent seems clear enough, unless enough people find the backbone to speak out about what is happening.

The Attempted Shutdown of Free Speech

Defence barrister Oakley argued that Hibbert’s call for the criminalisation of “conspiracy theories, especially in relation to terrorist attacks or atrocities,” amounts to

an astonishing interference on the right to freedom of expression. That is what he is trying to do. He is not just trying to shut down the discussion by Mr Hall of himself and his daughter, Eve. It seems to me from his plain words that he is trying to shut down any discussion of the Manchester incident.

It does not stop at Manchester, however, for, as Oakley realised,

If the Hibberts are successful or indeed if Mr Burnham brings in such a law or instigates such a law then one would not be able to criticise future inquiries and that is a very grave interference with the right to freedom of speech.

Demonstrating the perils of not allowing criticism of legal verdicts and public inquiries, Oakley cited the cases of the Birmingham six and the Guildford four, where those convicted of terrorist offences and murders were later exonerated because of campaigners pointing out inconsistencies in the evidence, even though this must have been uncomfortable for the survivors and relatives of the deceased. Similarly with the Hillsborough inquiry, Oakley observed that “campaigners did not accept the conclusions and ultimately the matter was reviewed and more or less the entire truth to the satisfaction of all was reached.”

Oakley also referred to the Hallett inquiry into the Covid lockdowns, which predictably turned out to be a whitewash aimed at covering up criminal malfeasance. He rightly questioned the premises of the inquiry report that (i) there was a pandemic and (ii) that 225,000 people in the UK died because of “Covid-19.” The global death rate “with Covid,” he noted, was merely 0.03%, and the “deaths within 28 days of a positive test” was so lax a standard of proof that he would have won every personal injury case he had worked on if a similar standard had been applied. Are the findings of the Hallett inquiry, therefore, to be placed beyond rational disputation? Will books like mine and Davis’ eventually have to be banned because they reject the official “Covid-19” narrative?

In this increasingly totalitarian context, in which the state seeks to position itself as the arbiter of reality, the verdict against Hall brings us, as Davis notes, to

the sharp end of something very dangerous. We’re getting to the sharp end of the censorship and the shutdown of free speech, and the shutdown of open democratic debate. They are shutting it down.

As Davis recognises, it is now a litigious act in the UK to question the accounts of those who claim to have survived major terrorist attacks. It is a slippery slope from here to criminalising other types of opinion which challenge official narratives.

Davis points out that the legacy media was, at one time, content to demonise Hall as a “disaster troll” and, the day after the Summary Judgment, as “Britain’s sickest man.” This was part of what Hall called “trial by media, and it “dissuaded the public from examining any of the evidence he reported.”

The tone changed during the July 2024 trial, however, when the Mail referred to Hall as a “TV producer.” The Judgment refers to him as an “independent journalist and broadcaster” [2]. Having first demonised Hall to turn public opinion against him, it later became important to underscore his journalistic credentials so that the Judgment against him could set a precedent for disciplining all independent media.

The Failure of the Independent Media

Given the evidence presented above, and in other parts of this series, that Hall was deliberately stitched up by the Establishment for the purpose of discipling the independent media, it behooves the latter to throw its weight unequivocally behind Hall.

Instead, the opposite has happened. With the exception of Iain Davis, whose defence of Hall and his work has been nothing short of magnificent, and Off-Guardian, not one “alternative media” outlet has been willing to defend Hall.

Davis stood with Hall from start to finish in 2024 in six impressive articles/series on the Summary Judgment, Marianna Spring, Hall’s critics, the trial, the Judgment, and the failure of the independent media, not to mention an entire book of his own independently investigating the Manchester Arena incident. He has also taken on Hall’s critics in two interviews.

Davis accurately observes that

The Establishment simply insists you believe whatever it tells you about Manchester without discussing, or even acknowledging, the bulk of the evidence. Hall is the only named journalist to have reported the information otherwise excluded from public discourse. For doing so, he has been attacked by the entire UK legacy media and faces bankruptcy in the courts.

Under those circumstances, Davis argues, alternative media outlets should be reporting the evidence that Hall uncovered, since that is precisely what the state does not want the public to see.

There is also a strong moral dimension to this, given the enormous personal costs that Hall has been forced to endure for no good reason. It is appropriate to show solidarity with him.

Instead, most commentators in the independent media have remained silent on the Hall verdict, and the few that have discussed it have actively attacked Hall, thereby aligning themselves with the state.

Failures Within the “Alternative Media” re: the Hall Case

Allen

18 days after the Summary Judgment was passed, independent radio host Richie Allen voiced his concerns about the Manchester Arena incident. “I know the intelligence agencies […] pull these stunts often” (52:00), he claimed, such as “the stitch-up that was the 7th July bombings” (01:07:00), or the Boston marathon bombing narrative, about which there is “something very very wrong” (01:34:40). He accepts that “the intelligence agencies of Western democracies have murdered their own people” (01:32:50) and that fabricated terror is going on (01:22:35).

He claims that there was a “deep state operation on 22nd May 2017” (01:42:50) and that the official version of what took place is “bollox” (01:12:20). He does not “like the fact that Salman was the son of MI6 asset Ramadan Abedi” (39:30) and does not “believe that Salman Abedi detonated a bomb on his person” (44:30). He is suspicious of the fact that “unexplainable things went wrong” with the emergency service response (39:30) and was among the first concert goers to be subjected to invasive post-”9/11” airport-style screening when the Arena reopened (01:34:00).

Yet, when it comes to Hall’s work on Manchester, Allen accuses Hall of being “not a proper journalist [but, rather,] a citizen journalist or an amateur journalist” (01:08:00), a “celebrity truther” (58:00) who “does no good for the independent media” (01:11:45). He wrongly (see Part 7) accuses Hall of “stalking" Eve Hibbert and “following her around,” falsely claiming “he came back, didn’t he?” (1:00:00).

Despite admitting to not having read Hall’s book, Allen claims “I would imagine there are plenty of suppositions in his book […] but I doubt there is any hard evidence that would stand up in a court of law.” (44:00). This was just after the Summary Judgment had made sure that Hall’s hard evidence could not be presented at trial.

According to Allen, “Richard D. Hall effectively makes a living out of denying that every terrorist event happens” (50:00) and produces “not forensic, not scientific, not good investigative journalism” (01:10:00). This is despite the wealth of forensic evidence on Manchester that Hall has produced, which would probably otherwise have escaped public attention (see Part 2).

Allen himself cites some of that evidence. The lack of broken glass in the City Room, for instance, “baffles” him (01:14:20). He is “at a loss to explain the lack of any damage” to the building (01:19:00). On the Bickerstaff video, he states “I can’t get my head round that […] I’m at a loss, it’s one of the most bizarre things […] that I have ever reported on as a journalist, yet I believe they did hurt people there” (01:20:00).

Allen is evidently conflicted. On the one hand, he does not trust the official account of Manchester and is aware of some of the evidence contradicting it. But, on the other hand, he feels the need to attack Hall, effectively siding with the High Court. Why?

Allen repeatedly returns to two themes. The first is that “While I have got a huge problem with the official narrative […] I am convinced that some people died and were terribly injured on the night” (46:30). He cites a friend’s sister who worked at Salford Royal hospital that night, who told him that people came in with terrible injuries and “the scene was chaos” (45:30). No doubt this is true: large numbers of people were injured in the stampede to exit the Arena. This does not mean they were injured by a TATP shrapnel bomb, however, or prove that anyone died.

The other theme is the funeral for eight-year-old Saffie Roussos, who officially was unlawfully killed by Salman Abedi, at which “all the TV news networks” were present (01:08:00). Allen observes of the funeral attendees “They’re not actors, these people. They are mourners […] They’re not liars.” (39:30). But Hall never claimed they were. Rather, as Davis points out,

[…] This is Hall’s specific allegation. He does not assert that no one died or that none of the claimed injuries are real. He suspects that some of the alleged deceased didn’t die and that some people’s injuries are fake. His only assertion, in this regard, is that no one died or sustained injuries as a direct result of Salman Abedi detonating a bomb in the Manchester Arena.

Allen claims “I don’t believe at all that Hall represents a threat to the Establishment,” given that the BBC has “gone after every one of us” (52:00). The turn to lawfare, however, represents a new stage in the state’s relationship to the independent media. Clearly, Hall’s evidence does pose a threat to the Establishment, and his persecution is intended to make the rest of the independent media back away from him, which is what has happened.

Lee and Sanders

In April 2024, three months before Hall’s trial, an eight-part propaganda series against Hall was released by Brent Lee and Neil Sanders. Sanders had previously featured as a guest on Hall’s show more than once, and so meets the intelligence agencies’ preferred choice of someone willing to “repent” the error of their ways. Davis debunked Lee and Sanders’ entire series efforts in real time.

UK Column

Davis draws attention to UK Column, which, despite having covered the Manchester Arena incident and the Hall case faithfully up until the Summary Judgment, soon afterwards aligned its Code of Practice to meet the state’s definitions regarding privacy, harassment, and secret filming under s.56(2)(c) of the Online Safety Act 2023. Davis plausibly suspects that UK Column is “concerned about falling foul of the same tyrannical oppression” as Hall if it reports the evidence on Manchester.

When Davis, along with other UK Column members, called on UK Column to broadcast that evidence (not requiring any editorialising), a spat ensued between Davis and UK Column editor Brian Gerrish. Gerrish claimed to find Hall’s evidence unconvincing but refused to explain why, and he irrationally accused Davis of having “absolutely poisoned the Manchester cup.”

In a segment on the verdict against Hall (shown by Davis), Gerrish claimed that Hall had “made [unspecified] mistakes,” while presenter Ben Rubin opined that Hall’s methods (which were well within reasonable bounds for investigative journalism — see Part 5) meant that he was “begging for trouble.” In Davis’s interpretation, UK Column here “more or less stressed that they would never do anything like Richard D. Hall did and did not approve of his actions.” Rubin capped off the attack by irresponsibly speculating that Hall may have been working in league with the BBC.

Finch

Rubin had got that last idea from Miri Ann Finch, who despite thinking that “Manchester was a hoax,” claims that “Hall is a fraud” who “did it to make himself look bad, to get himself into trouble, and to kick off the whole proceedings that have eventually culminated in an anti-free speech law.” If so, then it is strange that those proceedings only kicked off three years and three months after Hall’s visit to Eve’s home, during which time Hall was able to put ever more damaging evidence into the public domain.

According to Finch, Hall is guilty of “concealing himself outside the house of a disabled teenage schoolgirl and secretly filming her,” thus playing into the “stalker” propaganda dismissed in Part 7. This could be construed as defamatory.

Finch even accuses Hall of Duper’s Delight and of being “an establishment asset,” while Hall faces bankruptcy and losing his home at the hands of the Establishment, with a nine-year-old son to support. This reckless and irresponsible drivel shows no familiarity with the basic facts of the case and ironically aids the Establishment by reinforcing the myth that Hall did something wrong.

O’Loughlin

According to former mainstream news presenter, Aisling O’Loughlin, the mainstream media is right to call Hall “Britain’s sickest man” (24:40). In her view, Hibbert “has been persecuted, he has been harassed” by Hall (25:30), which is false (see Part 4). Like Finch, she ludicrously thinks that Hall “has been put in place, he’s some kind of operation “(35:40), his purpose being “to make conspiracy theorists look mad and bad so the public is thoroughly turned off.” She alleges guilt by association with Gemma O’Doherty (30:00). This baseless character assassination is tabloid-level.

Befitting of propaganda, O’Loughlin’s position is based on subjective perception and emotion, rather than evidence: “My heart is with real people, real victims” (56:30) and “I cried today when going through all those testimonies, because it is real” (58:00). She follows the official line that Abedi sourcing the components for a TATP bomb means a TATP bomb was used (17:00), contrary to the evidence. She uncritically accepts that the Hibberts were captured on CCTV and that their injuries are “consistent with a nuts and bolts bomb” (12:00), despite no relevant CCTV or medical evidence being in the public domain. She even uses the same language as the High Court when describing Hall’s evidence as “absurd and fantastical” (13:00). Thus, she effectively serves as a mouthpiece for officialdom.

When O’Loughlin is faced with primary empirical evidence, cognitive dissonance kicks in. For example, she thinks that Ruth Morrell was able to walk normally after having a bolt pass through her thigh, because of “adrenaline” (1:18:50). She thinks that the lighting in the City Room was not damaged because “These places have generators” (1:26:42). She claims that the Bickerstaff video is “not real evidence,” that it “proves nothing,” and that Hall’s analysis of it amounts to “sofa journalism” (1:05:10). She regards the merchandise stall as “false evidence” (11:00) and claims that Hall is performing “a magician’s trick” by drawing attention to it (44:00). When walked through the anomalies in the Barr footage by Davis, she still maintains that there was a bomb (1:24:00).

Roberts

British comedienne Abi Roberts thinks that Manchester was a false flag terrorist operation in which Salman Abedi was “a tool of the state, almost certainly known to the authorities, as usual” — but that it was not staged (1:29:40). Hall’s staged attack hypothesis, for her, involves “minimizing the human condition” (01:29:00) and “takes us away from compassion, morality, ethics” (01:02:50).

In a 50-minute discussion with James Delingpole about the Richard D. Hall case, Roberts cites not a single piece of Hall’s primary evidence. In fact, she admits “It’s not like I’ve looked into every single element of the night […] as it’s described” (1:28:15). Instead, her position is largely based on emotion and how she would have felt had people questioned the death of her husband a few years ago (1:13:00). Finch’s pernicious theory rears its ugly head in Roberts’ speculation: “What do you think about — and I have no evidence for this, I have just seen it floating about — that Richard D. Hall is part of the deep state? (1:10:30).

Like the High Court, Roberts attacks Hall’s use of statement analysis (which she calls “behavioural analysis”) as “pseudoscience” without acknowledging Hall’s primary evidence. She thinks it would be impossible for so many people to keep a staged attack a secret (01:04:00), but we know from the Manhattan Project and “9/11,” to give just two examples, that this is not the case. Staging an attack, she opines, “seems like an awful lot work” (01:36:50), but she has evidently not though the advantages of faking terrorist attacks from the perpetrators’ perspective, as Hall has.

O’Neill

Francis O’Neill does better than most commentators on the Hall case when claiming that “people lie but the physical evidence does not.” He is also correct to claim that

we cannot glibly dismiss the contentions of those who draw attention to possible state crimes because they upset our sensibilities. If we are genuinely interested in establishing the truth we must engage with the evidence. All opinions are not equal. In discussing possible state crimes, the opinion of someone who has not engaged with the evidence, is worthless.

In Part 7 of his “Victims or Actors?” series, O’Neill presents some of the key evidence from Davis’ book, much of which originated with Hall.

Nevertheless, when it comes to Hall, O’Neill claims that “Richard D Hall has long been regarded as a purveyor of disinformation — even within the truth movement.” O’Neill brands Hall a “9/11 disinfo troll,” based on his own flawed analysis of certain aspects of "9/11.” He does not see how problematic it is to smear Hall in this way while essentially adopting Hall’s position on Manchester as his own.

He even tries criticising Hall’s work on Manchester through numerology, i.e. the fact that Hall analysed statements from 33 alleged victims (with connotations of 33rd degree freemasonry), of which 23 indicated deception and 10 were inconclusive. 33+23+10 = 66, which presumably has some kind of satanic significance. This an exceptionally weak basis for criticism, not least because Hall explicitly ruled out any masonic significance, noting that the number 33 was just a coincidence.

Then, guess who should appear in O’Neill’s criticism of Hall?

A further note of caution is provided by Miri Finch who observes that, rather than being ignored, Hall has been given the attention of the state and a high profile by the media. He seems to be providing the UK's Alex Jones moment, where a notorious, media condemned, 'conspiracy theorist,' is declared to have transgressed the bounds of public decency in his investigation of the deaths of children and is then heavily censured. Thus others are potentially deterred from publicly questioning or investigating similar suspected state crimes. A new law further restricting inquiry has been proposed as a result of the case against Hall.

Whilst it is true that a fundamental motivation behind Hall’s prosecution was to deter the independent media from investigating suspected state crimes, O’Neill himself provides an obvious reason to question the parallel with Alex Jones, namely that is was “made explicit by the BBC’s so-called ‘disinformation specialist,’ Marianna Spring.” So, O’Neill here is endorsing Marianna Spring against Hall. In so doing, he is aligning himself with the broader conspiracy against Hall that will be discussed in Part 9.

Liverani

Petra Liverani begins her article on Hall with a quote from — guess who? — Miri Ann Finch (who in turn cross-promotes Liverani): “If you know their name, they’re in the game.” The idea here is that if someone is a household name, they must have been promoted by the lying mainstream media and are therefore part of a wider scam.

It’s a neat catchphrase, and the idea is not entirely without merit when one considers how perception management operations are run, but does it always hold? For example, Finch first got into the “conspiracy” realm by questioning vaccines. Andrew Wakefield is a household name. Does this mean that Wakefield is “in the game,” i.e. a disguised pawn of Big Pharma? Given Wakefield’s evisceration, this hardly seems likely, and the same is true of Hall. In both cases, vested interests aligned against their respective targets, using the press to demonise them. In Hall’s case, the reason for this — i.e., producing evidence which threatens to blow the lid off what Davis calls the biggest political scandal in modern British history — is obvious enough.

Liverani structures her article in the form of “seven questions concerning Richard D. Hall.” The short form Q&A is provided below.

1. Q: “Why would the orchestrators not ensure that control is on both sides rather than only on their side?” A: Because the orchestrators are not all powerful and their position is highly precarious should the truth come to light.

2. Q: “Why did RDH feel the need to observe anyone to check for authenticity of injuries […]?” A: Because he was performing investigative journalism based on what the primary evidence had revealed.

3. Q: “Why did RDH choose Eve Hibbert to spy on […]?” A: He did not “spy” on her (see Part 5).

4. Q: “Why did RDH report his observation [of Eve…]?” A: As a matter of journalistic integrity.

5. Q: “Why did RDH treat the words of the Roussos's as candid when they were scripted crisis actors […]?” A: Liverani here, and not Hall, is making the “scripted crisis actors” claim. Hall maintained objectivity while allowing a statement analyst to present her analysis.

6. Q: “Why did RDH concern himself at all with the Roussos' words when the best he could do was speculate?” A: Hall had analysis done on 33 different statements, looking to supplement his primary evidence with a form of analysis that is used by the FBI, among others.

7. Q: “Why were the Roussos's scripted so that it was possible to infer they were covering their daughter had already died?” A: The inference is made by Liverani, not Hall.

The fact that three of the seven questions relate to a video posted on O’Loughlin’s Substack suggests that Liverani has very little familiarity with the basic facts of the case. No primary evidence is mentioned. As Liverani herself admits, “If I had to do proper investigative work I wouldn't do it — it suits my lazy nature […].”

Summary

Allen, to his credit, maintains an open mind about Manchester despite his doubts about Hall, and gave an hour to interviewing Nick Kollerstrom, who defended Hall’s position. This seems like balanced journalism. However, having not engaged properly with Hall’s work, Allen is susceptible to the state’s propaganda about Hall and unwittingly repeats the usual lies and clichés about “stalking,” “not a proper journalist,” “no hard evidence,” no deaths or injuries, etc.

Lee and Sanders appear to have been co-opted for the purpose of producing anti-Hall propaganda for “alternative” circles.

It is telling that the only broadcaster with any significant reach (UK Column) lost its critical edge regarding Manchester following the Summary Judgment, and, despite the calls of its own members, refuses to broadcast Hall’s evidence, apparently concerned for its own survival. In that sense, the legal proceedings against Hall have had the desired effect of muzzling the independent media.

Finch’s baseless claim that “agent Richard D. Hall” is a state asset deployed to discredit critical thinking around official narratives somehow managed to influence every subsequent analysis of the Hall case discussed in this section. This only goes to show how poor that analysis has been. In particular, the idea that Hall was “spying” on a disabled schoolgirl is consistent with state propaganda, as Davis and I have shown, and needs to be called out.

Having previously defended Finch and Roberts on a different issue (without knowing them), it cannot be said that there is anything personal in my critique of them over the Richard D. Hall case. Nevertheless, it needs to be said that their positions, like that of Liverani, display next to no familiarity with even the basic facts of the case, let alone how the Judgment against Hall was reached. Their opinions and speculation are not evidence-based and, therefore, are of no real value.

From what I can see of O’Loughlin’s over-confident analysis of the Hall case, she has not actually left her role as a mainstream journalist. In classic mainstream fashion, she smears Hall gratuitously while proclaiming high journalistic standards, appeals to emotion and subjective perception rather than evidence, relentlessly reinforces the official version of events, and simply denies all evidence to the contrary.

O’Neill’s series reads as a tacit admission that Hall was right all along about Manchester while nevertheless seeking to smear Hall on the most spurious of grounds.

If Davis and I are correct that a fundamental purpose of the Hall case was to discipline the independent media, then, so far, it is largely a case of mission accomplished. Almost no one, it seems, is willing to defend Hall. Instead, the overwhelming tendency has been to align with state power by kicking an innocent man while he is down.

Conclusion

The independent/alternative media in the UK, as elsewhere, is under attack for speaking truth to power and eroding the effectiveness of the legacy media’s propaganda.

Legally speaking, one might have expected a free speech defence, such as an appeal to ECHR Article 10, to provide adequate protection for all independent media outlets going about their business lawfully and responsibly. After all, the legacy media, in particular the tabloid media, has an ignominious track record of irresponsibly publishing all kinds of smears and false allegations against its intended targets, yet has consistently been able to shield itself behind the principle of media freedom.

The verdict against Richard D. Hall, however, signals that legal protections for the independent media will be stripped away, no matter how egregiously, should it go too far in questioning power.

Hall could not rely on his Article 10 rights (freedom of expression) offering protection against the claimants’ Article 8 rights (respect for private and family life), even though there is no credible sense in which he can be said to have violated those Article 8 rights (see Part 4). Nor did his Article 9 rights offer an effective shield (albeit because of his inadvisable recourse to the Grainger criteria). Nor could Hall rely on the PHA prevention/detection of crime defence, because of his unfair treatment by Davison in the Summary Judgment. Nor could he rely on the PHA reasonable course of conduct defence, for the same reason. In sum, every defence available to Hall was unfairly removed.

All of this should have sent a shock wave through an alternative media confronted with the reality that we are now arriving at what Davis calls the “sharp end” of the shutting down of free speech. The response of the alternative media should have been united and unequivocal condemnation of the verdict against Hall.

Instead, only one man, Iain Davis, has actively defended Hall and his work. The rest of the so-called alternative media, with the exception of Off-Guardian, has either remained silent or has actively attacked Hall, typically invoking the state’s propaganda against him in the process (“stalker,” “spying,” “disinfo troll,” “not a proper journalist,” “denier,” “absurd and fantastical,” etc.).

This is a troubling state of affairs, as it means that the “independent media” either does not understand the significance of the Judgment against Hall, or is too cowardly to challenge it. As Davis writes,

Journalism and its ability to question power is directly threatened by the civil action brought against Richard D. Hall. Yet virtually no legacy media nor independent media outlet, with a couple of notable exceptions, is seemingly willing to publish anything that broaches this issue or defends either Hall or his work.

Nevertheless, the contest over the truth about the Manchester Arena incident is by no means over. Far from stopping the evidence coming to public awareness, the show trial of Richard D. Hall could yet have a Streisand effect and generate increasing public curiosity. But only if the independent media will cease partaking in the witch hunt against Hall and do the one thing that the legacy media never will, i.e. show the evidence to the public in an unbiased manner and the let the public decide for itself.

Defence barrister Oakley remarked at the trial:

[T]he Court is probably already aware that there is another book about these matters which has already been published. If […] the resolution which Mr Hibbert seeks is to have only positive discussions about himself and his daughter even though […] he has brought those into the public domain, […] it is not going to, to happen. […] Mr Hibbert is not expressly concerned about Mr Hall, he is concerned about Mr Hall’s conclusions. Other people are quite clearly going take up the baton. He cannot stop this.

Oakley here is referring to Davis’ book, and since the trial, Davis has continued to write about the Hall case. I, too, am offering my own nine-part series for public consideration, which I may eventually publish as a book. There is no good reason why other commentators should not also lend their voice to this issue, and in so doing, push back against the tyranny that is clearly manifesting in front of our eyes.

At the very beginning of his investigation, Hall was right to assert “We have the right to question and we have the right not to believe what they’re telling us about Manchester” [53]. Now more than ever, it is essential that the independent media does not lose sight of that fact.