|
(Continued from overleaf)
2000
[OMISSION OF SIGNIFICANT EVENT: On 13 February 2000 the Mail on Sunday reports that Mohamed Fayed had paid a freelance journalist named Mark Hollingsworth £10,000 for confidential legal papers, which had been stolen from outside the chambers of Hamilton's barristers by a man named Benjamin
'the binman' Pell. Hamilton immediately announces that he will consult his lawyers to appeal against the jury's verdict.]
[OMISSION OF SIGNIFICANT EVENT: On 3 March 2000, as a consequence of the revelations about the stolen legal documents, Neil Hamilton wins a stay of execution of the order to pay Fayed's costs.]
March 5: BBC2 shows Justice in Wonderland, the televised version of the Hamilton-Al Fayed events.
November 17: Hamilton announces he is to re-open his court battle with Al Fayed, alleging Al Fayed paid £10,000 for taking documents stolen from a barrister's rubbish bin.
Analysis:
Proceedings had actually started several months earlier in March.
November 19: Hamilton revealed he has got a job in the security business.
December 10 2000: Nine-month investigation into allegations that Al Fayed paid for stolen legal documents to help him win the "cash for questions" libel trial was dropped by detectives.
Analysis:
The statement is pejorative. The description 'nine-month investigation' implies that the police investigation had been thorough and 'dropped by detectives' because there was no evidence to support the allegations. However, the police investigation had been anything but thorough, for they did not interview Fayed or other important witnesses, such as
The Guardian's comment editor, David Leigh, or Fayed's Head of Security, John MacNamara.
According to Benjamin 'the binman' Pell, who took the papers from outside the chambers of Hamilton's barristers, it was David Leigh who suggested that he should sell the stolen documents to help Fayed's defence in the first place, via a friend of Leigh, Mark Hollingsworth. Pell also claimed that it was John MacNamara who gave Hollingsworth the £10,000 payment.
December 11: Hamilton starts his appeal against his "cash for questions" defeat by Al Fayed.
December 16: Hamilton refuses to reveal how his latest legal bill is being funded.
Analysis:
The statement is highly pejorative, and in any event (in the context of 'how the Hamilton affair unfolded') is not relevant. Of all the facts that could have been aired about Hamilton's appeal -- such as the astonishing allegation read out in court that
The Guardian's comment editor had started the whole thing off in the first place by recommending that Pell should sell the papers he stole to Fayed -- it is illustrative that the Press Association should instead focus on the relatively unimportant matter of who might have been funding Hamilton. (As it happens, Hamilton's Counsel, Anthony Boswood QC, acted for nothing.)
December 21: A year to the day after Hamilton lost his case, his appeal against his crushing cash for questions libel defeat fails.
Analysis:
It would have been more balanced if there had been a mention of the fact that Hamilton's appeal failed even though his legal team succeeded in proving that Fayed had indeed bought legal papers stolen from his barristers' chambers.
Contrary to Fayed's protestations of innocence and in spite of the Metropolitan Police's decision to drop the matter, the three judges found that, in seeking an improper advantage, Fayed had indeed authorised a £10,000 payment to journalist Mark Hollingsworth via his chief of security, John MacNamara (whom the police had not even interviewed).
Ignoring the further allegation that Fayed had offered an extra £10,000 to induce the additional theft of documents, the judges did not, however, impose any penalty on Fayed for his "discreditable" conduct. Instead, they concluded that, even if these transactions had been known to the libel trial judge at the time, this would have had no effect on the course or outcome of the trial, and so dismissed Hamilton's appeal.
|
|
