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

Part 4 - Harassment How?

Part 4 - Harassment How?

This is the fourth in a series of articles on the Richard D. Hall case. If you have not already done so, please read Parts 1, 2, and 3 first.

Introduction

Hall’s ability to use primary forensic evidence to challenge the state’s account of what happened in the City Room on May 22, 2017, was struck out without good reason by Master Davison in his Summary Judgment (see Part 3).

Even though no primary empirical evidence proving that the claimants were even at the Manchester Arena that night (such as a CCTV image allegedly showing them entering the City Room at 20:03) has ever been shown to the public, the Summary Judgment placed beyond contention, for the purposes of the trial, that they were present and were injured by Salman Abedi’s bomb.

As a result, Hall entered his trial in July 2024 at a significant disadvantage, for the Court had already sided with the claimants’ version of events before the trial had even begun.

Even so, the trial was not about what did or did not happen during the Manchester Arena incident. It was about harassment. Hall was found guilty of harassing two people whom he had never met or tried to meet, with whom he had never exchanged a word, and without him having any idea that he was engaging in harassment [201].

The numbers in square brackets in this part refer to the Judgment, unless otherwise specified.

This begs the question: what constitutes harassment, and how could Hall possibly have been found guilty of it?

What Constitutes Harassment?

The key piece of legislation relating to harassment in the UK is the Protection from Harassment Act 1997 (“the PHA”). Based on that Act, Steyn sets out three criteria for harassment:

A claim under s.1(1) gives rise to three issues on which the claimants bear the burden of proof, namely, (i) did the defendant engage in a course of conduct? (ii) did any such course of conduct amount to harassment? And (iii) did the defendant know, or should he have known, that the conduct amounted to harassment? [147]

These are the three criteria by which Steyn goes on to pass judgment on Hall, beginning on p. 45 of a 64-page document. I will discuss each in turn below.

First, however, it is important to note that “harassment” itself is left undefined in the PHA [150]. So, when a judge makes a judgment regarding whether or not a defendant has engaged in harassment, this is, necessarily to some degree, a matter of subjective interpretation, albeit rooted in the application of relevant case law.

In one case cited by Steyn, namely, Hayes v Willoughby [2013] UKSC 17 [2013] 1 WLR 935, Lord Sumption JSC, harassment is defined as “a persistent and deliberate course of unreasonable and oppressive conduct, targeted at another person, which is calculated to and does cause that person alarm, fear or distress” [151, my emphasis]. Here, it is clear that harassment must be intended to cause a negative psychological impact. As we will see, this was certainly not true of Hall.

Another case cited by Steyn, namely, Majrowski v Guy’s and St Thomas’s NHS Trust [2006] UKHL 34, [2007] 1 AC 224, finds that the course of conduct must cross “the boundary between conduct which is unattractive, even unreasonable, and conduct which is oppressive and unacceptable. To cross the boundary from the regrettable to the unacceptable the gravity of the misconduct must be of an order which would sustain criminal liability under section 2 [of the PHA]” [151]. This is a high bar to set: unattractive, unreasonable, and regrettable conduct does not count as harassment; rather, the conduct must be oppressive.

According to Steyn , “The hallmark of harassment is conduct that is unacceptable and oppressive, not merely unattractive or unreasonable. It must be of an order which would sustain criminal liability” [177]. Note that, in her interpretation of the case law here, the question of intentionality has been dropped.

Incredibly, Steyn rules that Hall’s conduct was indeed “oppressive, unacceptable, and of sufficient gravity to sustain criminal liability” [198]. As we will see, it requires an astonishing twisting of the facts to reach that conclusion.

Question (i) Did the defendant engage in a course of conduct?

According to Steyn, “the PHA specifies that a ‘course of conduct’ must involve ‘conduct on at least two occasions in relation to that person’” [148, my emphasis]. Furthermore, “The course of conduct must be targeted at someone” (in the sense of being “aimed or directed” at that person), though not necessarily the claimants:

The claimants each have to show that they are a “victim” of the relevant course of conduct, but it is sufficient if the course of conduct was targeted at another or others and they are “foreseeably likely to be directly alarmed or distressed by it” [149, my emphasis].

So, the first thing to ascertain is whether Hall, on at least two occasions, either “targeted” the claimants (in the sense of victimising them), or “targeted” someone else with the foreseeable likelihood that his conduct would cause alarm or distress to the claimants.

The conduct complained of by the claimants consists of four of Hall’s videos formerly hosted on richplanet.net (from 2018, 2019, and two from 2020), a visit to Eve Hibbert’s home in September 2019, Hall’s Book (2020) and Film (2020), as well as (inferentially) Hall’s in-person lectures [11].

On the question of whether Hall engaged in a “course of conduct,” Steyn rules:

In my judgment, the claimants have established that the conduct identified in paragraph 11 above amounted to a course of conduct for the purposes of the PHA. Each of the six publications complained of, from the 2018 Video published on 15 June 2018 through to the 2020 Video published on 13 June 2020, addressed the same theme. The 2018 Video would have been understood to mean that there were strong grounds to suspect that the Manchester Arena Attack was fabricated, and the allegation that it was a hoax was made more firmly in each subsequent publication. The publications were put into the public domain at regular intervals, then became more frequent in 2020, and each publication is continuing. In addition, Mr Hall presented about 12 public shows each year, on his UK tours during 2018 and 2019, and I infer that the content would have been similar to the 2018 and 2019 Videos. [175, my emphasis]

Here, Steyn finds that the PHA “course of conduct” criterion is satisfied by the fact that Hall’s conduct, as complained of by the claimants [11], addresses a common theme (as any investigative journalism must). Yet, this is not the same as being “targeted at someone” in the sense of being “aimed or directed” at them with a harassing effect, as per Steyn’s interpretation of the PHA [149].

Therefore, even on its own terms, the Judgment does not establish that the “course of conduct” criterion has been met.

The 2018 and 2019 Videos

According to Steyn, “Mr Hall’s evidence, which I accept on this point, was that both the 2018 and 2019 Videos were published before he became aware of the existence or identity of either claimant” [76]. In which case, the 2018 and 2019 Videos cannot be said to have been “in relation to” [148] or “targeted at” the claimants and so cannot form part of a “course of conduct” unless they were “targeted at another or others” [149]. 

Steyn later claims that those videos “target the families of those who died and surviving victims, and it was foreseeably likely that the claimants, who were seriously injured in the Attack, would be directly alarmed or distressed by them” [196]. Yet, how could it have been “foreseeably likely” that two people whom Hall did not know existed would be alarmed or distressed by his videos?

The case law which Steyn cites here [at 149] is Levi v Bates [2015] EWCA Civ 206 [2016] QB 91, Briggs LJ, [27, 29]. This was a case brought by former Leeds United director Melvyn Levi and his wife Carole against the club chairman, Ken Bates, for harassment in 2012. Mr Levi was awarded damages, and, on appeal in 2015, so was Mrs Levi. The legal significance of the case is that, while the harassment was only targeted at Mr Levi, it was deemed foreseeably likely that it would also affect Mrs Levi, given that members of the public had been encouraged to visit their family home in an aggressive or hostile manner, with the address provided.

There is a clear and obvious difference between the “foreseeable likelihood” that Mrs Levi would be alarmed or distressed by Mr Bates’ conduct (of course she would be) and the “foreseeable likelihood” that Martin and Eve Hibbert would be alarmed or distressed by Hall’s 2018 and 2019 Videos, which do not mention them, which Eve has never seen, and of which Martin Hibbert may not have been aware at the time (as I argue later in this series). Steyn here is evidently twisting the concept of “foreseeably likely” to include those videos as part of the “course of conduct” complained of, when in fact they have nothing to do with causing alarm or distress to the claimants. This is highly disingenuous and unfair.

In any case, it is true that the 2018 and 2019 Videos “target the families of those who died and surviving victims” [196]? Let us consider each in turn.

The 2018 Video (viewer discretion advised: contains imagery of dead bodies)

The 2018 Video (above) is 56 minutes long, of which only eight minutes (15:50—23:55) deal with Manchester, making no mention of the families and briefly showing two photographs of unnamed survivors. In it, Hall stresses “I’m mainly pointing out anomalies and asking questions about the Manchester attack,” such as why it was called an “attack” rather than a “bombing,” and why the Parker photograph looks so different to images from previous terrorist attacks, such as the 1974 Birmingham Pub Bombings.

The Judgment records Hall’s comment on the Parker photograph in the 2018 Video:

I don’t think you can identify any casualty in here which you would say the evidence suggests it’s certainly a fatality. There’s no detached limbs or heads, etc. Right? So I’m not suggesting this is true, but from that image, they could just be people lying down in an exercise, right? I’m not saying that is true though, I’m just analysing the evidence. [54]

And again later: “Let me just reiterate, I do not know what happened in this attack […]” [56].

Not recorded in the Judgment is that Hall, in the 2018 Video, noted the lack of damage to the floor, windows, and lighting, and expressed curiosity as to why armed police officers sealed off the City Room for 70 minutes, refusing entry to paramedics who wanted to help the injured (three paramedics were already present).

At any rate, it is clear that Hall was not making any hard claims about what took place in the City Room on May 22, 2017. He was not trying to cause anyone alarm or distress, and he certainly did not “target” bereaved families or survivors.

If anything, it was the mainstream media that Hall “targeted” for its track record of lying about false flag terrorist events. For example, Hall showed footage of what the Judgment refers to as “an obviously staged bombing, said to be in Iraq, in which a car explodes and then several people run from out of shot to lie down and pretend to be injured” [53].

A hoaxed terrorist attack in Iraq in 2016.

The Judgment fails to record Hall’s criticisms of the Mail for leaving up an article reporting on the obviously staged bombing as though it were true, or his contention that false flag terrorism only works with the complicity of the mainstream media. Hall’s “Hiding From Terror” video was published on June 15, 2018. The Mail revised its position on August 26, 2018.

Given that the Judgment devotes eight paragraphs [50-57] to describing the 2018 Video without mentioning victims’ families or survivors, we might wonder why the true target of that video (the mainstream media) is not mentioned and how, instead, that video was construed as “targeting” victims’ families and survivors.

The 2019 Video (viewer discretion advised: contains imagery of a severed torso)

On May 18, 2019, Hall published a three-part video titled “Brexit, Jo Cox, Manchester Arena ‘bombing,’” which was based on a live show performed on April 12, 2019 [65]. Only the third part (above) deals with Manchester.

The Judgment records some the key claims from the first part, namely:

• “Staged terrorism is one of the tools of statecraft in the modern era. Staged hate and extremism is one of the tools of statecraft in the modern era” [65].

• “The vast majority of terrorism that we see reported in our mainstream media is not carried out by the groups that they claim it on. The vast majority of terrorism is carried out by governments and government agencies. It’s as simple as that” [66].

• “[…] the London Nail Bombings, the London Tube Bombings, the Cumbria shootings, the Jo Cox attack, […] the Manchester Arena bombing […T]here’s no doubt in my mind that most, if not all of these are fabricated terrorist incidents. In other words, the public have been duped into believing who perpetrated them. And the same applies for all of these European fabricated terrorist incidents. [67].

None of these claims are challenged in the Judgment.

Remarkably, the Judgment goes on to cite Hall’s seminal hypothesis (at the end of the second part of the 2019 Video) regarding fabricated terror, again without challenge:

If we go back in time to 9/11 and work our way forward. At that time, clearly, people died in 9/11. And then we go to 2005, the London Bombings, people died in those London Tube Bombings. No doubt about that, 56 died. I consider the Cumbria shootings as a terrorist incident or a fabricated terrorist incident. Yes, people definitely died then. Now as we approach 2012, 2013, it all gets a bit different, right? This is when I believe the hoaxing started. So we had Sandy Hook was in at the end of 2012, and as I showed you earlier, the Boston Bombing was in 2013. So they are cases where it looks like deaths were being fabricated. So I think there was a change of modus operandi around that time from real deaths to fabricated deaths. But I think they’ve changed their modus operandi again […]

So if you take that time, 2016, and look at the UK terror attacks from that point, ok, we’ve got the Jo Cox Attack in 2016, the Westminster Attack in 2017 that took place on a bridge. … We then look at the next UK attack, the 2017 Manchester Arena bombing [which] was done indoors. Not only that, it was done in an area which was being controlled before the quote unquote bomb went off. So again, very little public visibility. […] So I think from 2016 onwards, they have taken care to make sure that there’s no witnesses because everyone has a mobile phone in their pocket these days, right? So I think around about […] 2012/2013, we’re seeing more fabricated deaths, and I think we’re still having that now. But they’re being very careful not to allow people to gather their own evidence from these fabricated terrorist incidents. [69]

Left out of the Judgment from Hall’s remarks above are his reference to the Boston Unbombing documentary, which provides three hours of evidence, based on camera phone footage from nearby buildings, that moulage and pyrotechnics were used at the Boston Marathon incident in 2013. Hall also notes that the Westminster attack of 2017 took place on a bridge, i.e. a place in central London that is not overlooked by buildings and thus not amenable to members of the public taking photographs. The Manchester Arena incident took place indoors in an area that was being controlled (Showsec stewards, for instance, sealed the doors separating the City Room and the concourse before the bang — see here from 05:11 to 06:21). The 2017 London Bridge attack again took place on a bridge, and at night, reducing visibility. The 2017 Finsbury Park attack was at night. Hall’s hypothesis regarded the changed modus operandi in fabricated terrorist attacks was, thus, evidence-based.

The Judgment cites Hall’s hypothesis, in the 2019 Video, that two short videos and the Parker photograph were taken in the morning of May 22, 2017, not the evening [70]. Not noted, however, is that Hall subsequently withdrew that hypothesis.

It is only at the 29:18 mark of the third part of the 42-minute 2019 Video that anything which could remotely be construed as “targeting” all the bereaved families and survivors comes into play. The Judgment cites Hall’s question:

“[…] how could they rope so many people in to lie and take part in such an event? Well, I think probably the biggest motivating factor, apart from signing a contract, right, is the money that they’ve received.” (Emphasis added.) [72]

The Judgment does not record Hall’s observation that, at that time, the Manchester Arena Compensation Fund had paid out £20.6 million (the final total was £21.6 million) to survivors and families of the bereaved. According to Hall’s calculations, this averaged out at £374,000 per bereaved family and £44,000 for anyone who was physically or psychologically injured. Anyone who was present in the foyer got an automatic £10,000. Hall was contacted by someone claiming to have been in the foyer, whose account did not match the evidence, prompting him to wonder whether the money was creating new fake witnesses months after the event. In addition, some people claiming to be victims set up their own funding channels.

Rather than “targeting” all the bereaved families and survivors, in the sense of seeking to cause them alarm and distress, what Hall is doing here is engaging in a thought experiment. If, as the forensic evidence indicates, a massive TATP shrapnel bomb did not go off in the City Room, what explains the large number of people claiming to have been injured by it, or bereaved? As thorny as this question is, it is necessary to ask it, if one accepts the primary empirical evidence that there was no bomb. Only by excluding that evidence from the trial and proceeding from the premise that there incontrovertibly was a bomb does Hall’s thought experiment appear unreasonable, or as evidence of "targeting” the victims.

The Judgment notes Hall’s “working hypothesis” regarded the 22 deceased and “how they faked each of these deaths” [73]. Note: this is a working hypothesis and not an allegation. None of the 22 is named individually in the working hypothesis. If there was no bomb, as the forensic evidence indicates, then the possibility of fake deaths, as well as the methods for faking those deaths, do have to be considered, and ultimately exposed if that is the nature of the deception being perpetrated against the public. On the other hand, if there incontestably was a bomb, then any suggestion that the deaths were fake automatically appears as sick and offensive. Hence the importance of the Summary Judgment in biasing the trial.

In sum, the 2018 and 2019 Videos were certainly not “targeted” at the claimants, nor did they “target the families of those who died and surviving victims” [196]. To claim as much relies on a wilful misinterpretation of those videos that is only sustainable in a legal context where the most important forensic evidence has been suppressed.

Where was the “Targeting”?

Steyn claims that “the September 2019 visit undoubtedly was targeted at the claimants. The same is plainly true of the Book, the Film and the 2020 Video” [196]. On this basis, she sides with Prosecution barrister Price that “the attack on Mr Hibbert’s honesty is not just a consequence of Mr Hall’s theory: it is a central building block” [196].

However, according to Steyn herself, Hall’s “staged attack” theory was already formulated in the 2019 Video, in which “Mr Hall summarises his ‘working hypothesis’ regarding the deceased” [74]. Steyn accepts that this was “published before he became aware of the existence or identity of either claimant” [76]. So, on Steyn’s own terms, it is not possible that Hall’s questioning of Hibbert’s integrity constitutes a “central building block” of his theory [196].

Hall paid a visit to Eve Hibbert’s home on or around September 1, 2019. However, he was not attempting to make contact with the claimants, but, rather, with Sarah Gillbard, Eve’s mother. Martin Hibbert was not living with his daughter and ex-wife, and Steyn accepts that Hall had “no intention of speaking to Eve” [81]. Therefore, how could Hall have been “targeting” the claimants through that visit?

According to Steyn, 

The visit to Eve’s home was part of a more extensive trip. Mr Hall stated in evidence that on or about 1 September 2019, “I set off in my vehicle and visited 19 properties throughout the North of England to attempt to speak to witnesses in relation to the Manchester incident” (RH2 §20). One of those 19 properties was the home of Ms Gillbard and Eve. [80] 

Because the visit to Eve’s home was just one of 19 such visits, Eve cannot be said to have been “targeted” by Hall in the sense of being singled out. The visit was just one small part of a wider investigation.

That just leaves “the Book, the Film and the 2020 Video” [196].

Part 3 of the 2020 Video, on Manchester. Source: Rumble.

Were these “targeted at” the claimants, in the sense of being “aimed or directed” at them [149]? Although the claimants do feature in them, they only account for a small proportion of the content. For example, Hall told the Court, “I discuss over 200 people who were either directly involved or [...] first hand witnesses, 200, in [...] a 435 page book. So [the claimants] were [...] not central.” The index of the book reveals that the claimants appear on 21 pages out of 435, i.e., fewer than 5% of pages. So, it is a stretch to claim, as Steyn does, that those publications “targeted” the claimants, any more than they “targeted” the other 200+ individuals discussed in them.

Even if we were to accept that a single mention of the claimants could in theory be classed as “targeting,” further context would be needed to understand why it should count as part of a harassment campaign. Apparently, Hall’s mentioning of the claimants in a handful of publications between March 27, 2020, and June 18, 2020, constitutes “harassment,” because he casts doubt on their claim that they were injured in the City Room on May 22, 2017 — “a pivotal fact of their lives” [203]. The Summary Judgment served to place that claim legally beyond doubt.

Yet, for those of us who think that the Summary Judgment is deeply flawed and should be rejected, Hall’s evidence-based scepticism towards that claim is legitimate. Given that the claimants have not produced any publicly available proof that they were present at the Arena that night (the 20:03 CCTV image of them entering the City Room, referred to during the summary judgment hearing, would be the obvious starting point), Hall’s scepticism seems even more pertinent.

Question (ii) Did any such course of conduct amount to harassment?

No Personal Contact

Prima facie, it seems remarkable to think that Hall has been convicted of harassment — defined in Hayes v Willoughby, [1] as “a persistent and deliberate course of unreasonable and oppressive conduct, targeted at another person […]” [151] — in relation to two people whom he had never met or tried to meet, and with whom he had never exchanged a word.

Martin Hibbert confirmed, under cross-examination, that Hall had contacted neither himself nor Eve: 

Mr Oakley: OK, well developing that a little bit, at no stage […] has Mr Hall contacted you on Twitter or by email or by any other means to say:

“Hey Mr Hibbert, I have just published another video about you, have a look at it.” 

He has not contacted you at [all] has he? 

Mr [Hibbert]: From what I know he does not have a Twitter account. I do not think he has an Instagram account, so I do not know how he would be able to contact me through Twitter and Instagram. But no, from what I am aware he has not contacted me personally. 

Mr Oakley: He has not contacted you by any means, even by Royal Mail to say: 

“I am publishing another video about you, have a look at it.” 

He has not contacted you at all has he? 

Mr Hibbert: Not personally, no. 

Mr Oakley: Not personally. So, he has not contacted Eve either has he? 

Mr Hibbert: Personally, no. 

Mr Oakley: [...H]e has not tried to contact you through third parties either has he? 

Mr Hibbert: Not that I am aware of.

Therefore, in what sense can Hall be said to have “harassed” the claimants, having had no personal dealings with them? We will come onto “harassment by publication” in Part 5, but for now it is enough to note that it is a peculiar form of harassment indeed that involves no direct interaction between the alleged perpetrator and the alleged victims.

Hall’s Treatment of Eve — “Oppressive and Unacceptable”?

According to Steyn,

In my judgment, tracking down such a private and vulnerable young person as Eve and her mother, going to her home, speaking to her neighbours and surreptitiously taking video footage of her, on her own doorstep, where she had reason to feel safe, was — giving appropriate weight to his right to freedom of expression, which was engaged when he sought to gather material for his publications — a wholly unwarranted interference with the family’s right to privacy, which is properly characterised as oppressive and unacceptable. [188]

But was Hall’s conduct here really “oppressive and unacceptable”? Steyn herself accepts that Hall had “no intention of speaking to Eve” [81], “did not speak to Ms Gillbard, Eve, or anyone else in Ms Gillbard’s home” [82], and that “the claimants remained unaware of Hall’s visit to Eve’s home until Ms Gillbard was informed by the police on or around 21 July 2021” [174]. It is, therefore, hard to see how Hall’s visit to Eve’s home could be construed as oppressive, given that Eve and her mother did not know it had happened for 22 months. How could they have felt “oppressed” by an event they did not know had occurred? They conceivably may never have known, were it not for the visit of Greater Manchester Police in July 2021.

The police visit, part of Operation Manteline, is mentioned in a letter from GMP dated July 5, 2024, which was sent in response to a request for information sent by the claimants’ solicitors on April 23, 2024. As per the official trial transcript, the letter states: “Our instructions are that no further activity was reported to the Manteline team, and no further action has been taken.” 

Thus, having been made aware of Hall’s one and only visit to Eve’s home, the police were satisfied that his conduct warranted no further action; they did not see it as part of a “course of conduct” warranting harassment charges. The Judgment, however, truncates the sentence cited above to “GMP confirmed in their letter that ‘no further activity was reported to the Manteline team’ [141]. This removes the obvious indication that GMP, as of July 5, 2024, saw no reason to regard Hall’s conduct as suspicious or worthy of further investigation.   

Did taking video footage of Eve “on her own doorstep, where she had reason to feel safe” [188] really endanger her safety? No one knew at the time that the footage had been taken, and Hall deleted it without broadcasting it [85]. Six months later, once his overall investigation in the Manchester Arena incident was complete, Hall reported, as one tiny element of that investigation, his suspicion that Eve was in a wheelchair, although the camera had been so far away that he had not been able to identify her reliably (Hall, 2020, p. 221). Hall never returned to Eve’s home, nor did he ever again seek contact with Ms Gillbard or either claimant. So why is the language of safety being used at [188]? What threat was Hall to Eve, objectively speaking?

Prosecution barrister Price claimed in his opening statement that Hall’s visit “demonstrated to Sarah and Eve that people can find them.” No evidence of this was provided during the trial, however. According to Daisy Burke’s witness statement, “Eve has told me that she is worried the Defendant will try and find her again.” But this subjective perception does not reflect the objective reality that, five years later, Hall had not tried to find her again, and nor had anyone else. 

In cross-examining Hibbert, Gillbard, and Burke, Defence barrister Oakley established from each of them that Hall never returned to the vicinity of Eve’s home after his one and only visit there in September 2019:

Mr Oakley: Do you have any evidence whatsoever that Mr Hall has ever attended the vicinity of Eve’s home after 1 September [...] 2019? 

Mr Hibbert: No, I have not.

Mr Oakley: I put it to you the only incident in which Mr Hall was involved was on or around 1 September 2019 when he turned up out, in the street and filmed from his car, but there are no other incidents are there? 

Mr Hibbert: Not that I am aware of.

Mr Oakley: And it is fair to say that there have been no other similar incidents whereby Mr Hall has attempted to approach you or Eve in any way. 

Miss Gillbard: No that I have been made aware of.

Mr Oakley: There have been no other incidents of any kind, either from Mr Hall or from any of his supporters, which have required the police to investigate. That must be right, from what we see in that [GMP] letter, yes?

Miss Gillbard: Yes. 

Oakley: He has not approached your home again, he has not hidden in the bushes, he has not followed either you or Eve on the way to school or the shops or anything else. Nothing of that guise has happened, has it? 

Miss Gillbard: No.

Mr Oakley: So between September of 2019 and today, which is nearly five years, there have been no other incidents in which Mr Hall has attempted to come to Eve’s home or similar, no incidents of that kind at all are there? 

Miss Burke: No, not that I know of. 

It is hard to see from this evidence how Hall’s behaviour could be construed as threatening Eve’s safety. 

Presumably, the idea that Hall was a threat to Eve is necessary to substantiate the finding that his conduct in visiting Eve’s home was “oppressive.” The “safety” concept appears in a further four paragraphs towards the end of the Judgment [225, 227, 237, 240], in all cases to present Hall as a threat to Eve’s safety, based purely on the subjective feelings of others and Eve being encouraged to think of Hall as “the stalker man” by her mother. There is no objective reason to see Hall as ever having endangered Eve, however. 

Even if we were to accept, hypothetically, that Hall’s 2019 visit to Eve’s home was “oppressive and unacceptable” [188], this is still not enough to substantiate a claim of harassment. For example, in Conn v Council of City of Sunderland (2007) the Court of Appeal held that a site foreman's conduct towards one of his team was insufficient to give rise to a claim of harassment under the PHA because only one of the two incidents was sufficiently serious to cross the threshold into oppressive and unacceptable conduct. Because Steyn does not explicitly claim that any other aspect of the conduct complained of by the claimants was “oppressive and unacceptable,” the “course of conduct” requirement (“at least two occasions” [148]) is not met.

Steyn appears to anticipate this objection when she states at [152]:

When determining question (ii), the course of conduct, viewed as a whole, must be assessed objectively. It is not necessary for each individual act that comprises the course of conduct to be oppressive and unacceptable. Individual acts which, viewed in isolation, appear fairly innocuous, may take on a different complexion when viewed as part of a bigger picture. See Hayden v Dickenson [2020] EWHC 3291 (QB), Nicklin J, [44].

There are twelve subsections to section [44] of Hayden v Dickenson. Steyn does not specify which one she is referring to, which is telling, because in fact none of them make the claim that “It is not necessary for each individual act that comprises the course of conduct to be oppressive and unacceptable,” or words to that effect. Therefore, the legal basis of Steyn’s assertion at [152] is questionable.

In sum, there is no credible evidence that Hall’s conduct amounted to harassment.

Question (iii) Did the defendant know, or should he have known, that the conduct amounted to harassment?

Should Hall Have “Known”?

Hall claimed: “At no time did I believe or suspect or know, that my actions of publishing researched facts and some honest opinion could or would cause harm to anyone” [200].

Steyn finds, however, that, while Hall “did not know his conduct amounted to harassment” [201], he “should have known that his course of conduct amounted to harassment” [202, my emphasis], in keeping with PHA s.1(1)(b) (“knows or ought to know amounts to harassment”).

Note the tension here between Steyn’s finding that Hall “did not know his conduct amounted to harassment” [201] and her previous assertions that Hall engaged in a course of conduct that was both “targeted” [188, 189, 196] and “deliberate” [197]. If Hall did not know he was engaging in harassment, how could he have deliberately “targeted” the claimants? Presumably, he must have meant to oppress them, and succeeded in doing so through a course of conduct, without knowing that this counts as harassment. However, as I have shown above, there is no objective evidence that Hall’s conduct was oppressive, or that Hall had any intent to oppress.

Why exactly “should” Hall have known that his conduct amounted to harassment? One reason given by Steyn is that

It is apparent from his videos that he knew he was at risk of having either particular videos taken down by streaming channels, or having whole accounts closed, and that the reasons given related to the impact of his allegations that major terrorist incidents were fabricated on the victims of those tragedies. It might be thought this would put him on notice that he was abusing his platform. [201]

Although she fails to specify it, Steyn here is referring back to paragraph [78], regarding the deletion of Hall’s Vimeo account in September 2019.

Not mention is made in the Judgment, however, of Hall’s reply to Vimeo, as presented in the 2020 Video (51:35):

Hello,

What evidence do you have that anyone was killed at the Manchester Arena?

If you cannot provide any then you have deleted the channel without any reason.

There is NO EVIDENCE in the public domain that shows anyone died. ALSO — There has so far been no inquest, therefore it is not officially known whether anyone died.

It’s very worrying that you are censoring freedom of speech.

Richard

Because the Summary Judgment decreed that 22 innocent people plus Abedi did die, Hall’s contention that “There is NO EVIDENCE in the public domain that shows anyone died” could simply be omitted from the Judgment, allowing Steyn to side with Vimeo.

Steyn accuses Hall of being “blinkered in his belief that the false story he has spun is true” [201]. It is difficult to square that accusation, however, with her earlier remark that

[…] Mr Hall said that it had “always been my position that if incontrovertible evidence was brought forward which proves beyond doubt each of the claimants’ assertions, I would be willing to modify the opinions expressed about the claimants in my publications to reflect this.” [179(5)]

In any case, it is the state’s position, which refuses to recognise any counter-evidence, that is blinkered, not Hall’s.

“Reasonableness”

The test of whether Hall “should have known” is “reasonableness.” According to Steyn, “A reasonable person in possession of the same information that the defendant had would know the course of conduct in which he engaged would alarm, distress and have a harassing effect on the claimants” [202]. Yet, I have provided plenty of reasons above why Hall’s conduct did not amount to harassment, and I will provide even more reasons in Part 7 on “Alarm and Distress.” It is perfectly possible for a reasonable person to reach a different conclusion to Steyn’s.

Steyn seeks to drive home the “reasonableness” argument in paragraph [203]:

A reasonable person with such information would appreciate the unacceptability of tracking down and furtively filming Eve, given her vulnerability, and her parents’ patent wish to protect her from media attention, and the alarm and distress that doing so would cause her and her family. A reasonable person with such information would realise that repeated attempts to undermine and discredit the account given by a victim of such a tragedy, which is inevitably now a pivotal fact of their lives, by making highly defamatory statements and casting out baseless and deeply offensive speculation with abandon and levity, for commercial gain, would cause real distress. A reasonable person in possession of the same information that the defendant had would appreciate how surveilled the claimants would feel as a result of his treatment of their words and images and adoption of intrusive investigative techniques, and would understand how disturbing and distressing it is for people who have suffered as they have to feel so surveilled. [203]

Note the rhetorical usage here of a tripartite technique for delivering the message (i.e., “a reasonable person,” repeated three times), known to be effective in advertising and applied behavioural psychology. We should not allow rhetoric, however, to cloud our interpretation of the claims made.

In the first usage, a reasonable person would find it unacceptable to track down and furtively film Eve against her “parents’ patent wish to protect her from media attention,” knowing the alarm and distress this would cause [203]. Yet, as I will argue in Part 5, Martin Hibbert patently had no intention of protecting his daughter from media attention when he serialised his book, which contains graphic descriptions of Eve’s injuries, in the Daily Mail in April 2024. In Part 5, I will also discuss Steyn’s deliberate choice of the term “furtive” and why it is inappropriate and prejudicial.

In the second usage, a reasonable person would not repeatedly seek to discredit a Manchester victim “by making highly defamatory statements and casting out baseless and deeply offensive speculation with abandon and levity, for commercial gain” [203]. However, the claimants did not bring a defamation claim. Nor did Hall engage in “baseless” speculation about the Manchester Arena incident; rather, he undertook an extensive investigation. Only off the back of the Summary Judgement, which itself lacks any solid evidential foundation, can Steyn dismiss Hall’s research as “baseless.” Offensiveness is not relevant to harassment; rather, the conduct must be “oppressive and unacceptable” [151]. Otherwise, offensiveness falls under the right to free speech: as Sedley LJ ruled in Redmond-Bate v Director of Public Prosecutions (1999) 7 BHRC, [2000] HRLR 249 at [20], “Freedom only to speak inoffensively is not worth having.” In that context, Hall’s “abandon and levity” might just be seen as maintaining a sense of humour in the face of very dark subject matter. I reject the “commercial gain” insinuation in Part 5.

“Surveillance”

In the third usage, a reasonable person in possession of the same information as Hall would, according to Steyn,

appreciate how surveilled the claimants would feel as a result of his treatment of their words and images and adoption of intrusive investigative techniques, and would understand how disturbing and distressing it is for people who have suffered as they have to feel so surveilled. [203]

The idea of surveillance, however, only came up once in the trial, when Prosecution barrister Price stated “The Claimants feel permanently surveilled by the Defendant and those who seek to believe his conspiracies. They cannot move, they feel suffocated, they will say, by that.” So, we are dealing with alleged feelings here, rather than objective facts.

In what sense, objectively, can Hall be said to have “surveilled” the claimants? Section 26(2)b of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA, 2000) states that directed surveillance is conducted “in such a manner as is likely to result in the obtaining of private information about a person” (my emphasis). Yet, with the exception of his lawful filming from his vehicle in 2019, Hall has only ever used publicly available material when discussing the claimants. With that one exception, Hall has never behaved in a way that was likely to result in him obtaining private information about the Hibberts: all the information was in the public domain already.

Under cross-examination, Hibbert confirmed that Hall had only ever made use of publicly available information about him:

Mr Oakley: Mr Hall has only looked at publicly available information about you, has he not?

Mr Hibbert: Publicly available that I have authorised to be seen, yes.

Mr Oakley: Just to be clear, there is no suggestion by you that he has obtained any of this information by deceit, by phone hacking or any other nefarious mean?

Mr Hibbert: Correct.

According to Steyn in her only other mention of surveillance,

The Book expressly referred to “further investigation of the participants”, and the need for “more evidence” (paragraphs 96 and 98 above), intensifying the impression given by the treatment of any images and statements by victims, or family members, that had reached the public domain, that the claimants (and others) would continue to be surveilled. [197, my emphasis]

Again, it is hard to see, based on Section 26(2)b of RIPA, how analysing information in the “public domain” can legally constitute surveillance (i.e., “likely to result in the obtaining of private information about a person”). Indeed, Steyn here merely refers to the “impression” of surveillance, rather than actual surveillance.

Conclusion

There is no credible sense in which Hall’s conduct, as complained of by the claimants [11], meets the legal criteria for harassment. In terms of the three key criteria set out in the PHA:

(i) Did the defendant engage in a course of conduct?

Steyn notes that a course of conduct must be “targeted at someone” in the sense of being “aimed or directed” at them [149], yet in Hall’s case, it is merely that his conduct addressed a common “theme” [175].

The 2018 and 2019 Videos should not be included in the “course of conduct.” Contrary to Steyn’s twisting of the case law in Levi v Bates, it was not “foreseeably likely” that two people whom Hall did not know existed would be alarmed or distressed by those videos. Nor did those videos “target the families of those who died and surviving victims” [196]. For example, the Judgment devotes eight paragraphs [50-57] to describing the 2018 Video without mentioning victims’ families or survivors. The 2019 Video, whose three parts last around two hours in total, spends ten minutes at the end on the reported victims and their families, not to “harass” them, but, rather, to try to get to the bottom of how fraud and deception may have been carried out against the British people by their own authorities.

Hall’s visit to Eve’s home in September 2019 cannot reasonably be said to have “targeted” either claimant, given that Martin Hibbert did not live there and Hall made no attempt to speak to Eve. The visit was just one small part of a wider investigation.

Although the claimants feature in the Book, the Film and the 2020 Video, they are bit part players: they were not “targeted” for harassment. Only if it is beyond dispute that they sustained their injuries in the City Room on May 22, 2017, could Hall’s questioning of their account even remotely be construed as harassment, and of course the whole point of the Summary Judgment was to place their account beyond dispute. For those able to think for themselves, however, the flaws in the Summary Judgment, plus the fact that the pubic has still not seen any hard evidence placing the claimants at the Manchester Arena that night, should offer reason for doubt.

(ii) Did any such course of conduct amount to harassment?

We are expected to believe that Hall “harassed” the claimants, having had no personal dealings with them, and that he “oppressed” Eve (in the sense of endangering her) by lawfully filming her driveway from a public highway and then deleting the footage without broadcasting it. Eve’s mother did not find out about this for 22 months, so could hardly have been “oppressed” by it, and the police investigation that informed her cleared Hall of any wrongdoing. Given that all the Defence witnesses admitted that Hall never returned to that vicinity, he can hardly be seen as a “threat” to Eve. And even if the 2019 Visit were, in some twisted fashion, to be construed as “oppressive,” then at least one other element of the course of conduct must also be deemed “oppressive” for the harassment charge to stick, contrary to Steyn’s misreading of Hayden v Dickenson.

(iii) Did the defendant know, or should he have known, that the conduct amounted to harassment?

Steyn wants us to believe that Hall engaged in a course of conduct that was “targeted” [188, 189, 196], “deliberate” [197], “oppressive and unacceptable” [188], but also that he “did not know his conduct amounted to harassment” [201]. This is ridiculous on its face. Apparently, Hall “should have known” [202], but instead behaved in a manner that was “blinkered” [201] and unreasonable [203]. This is gaslighting of the highest order on the part of a Court which point blank refused to recognise any counter-evidence to the official version of events. Steyn accuses Hall of making the claimants feel “surveilled,” a loaded term implying privacy breaches, even though nearly all Hall’s work around the Hibberts has involved analysing publicly available information, and even though Hall showed no further interest in the Hibberts after June 2020 until they began their lawsuit against him two and a half years later.

Final Word

It is scandalous how much legal chicanery was necessary to find Hall guilty of harassment. From the Summary Judgment used to ensure he could not present his main evidence, to skewed (and sometimes false) interpretations of case law, to biased presentations of Hall’s publications, to omission of key content, to the twisting of particular words, concepts, and phrases, it is abundantly clear that the law has not been fairly and impartially applied in this case. In fact, a serious miscarriage of justice appears to have taken place.