by Cliff Todd
Meanwhile, preparations for trial continued, not just at the FEL, but by all parties involved, and the start of the trial duly arrived in October 2006. And only then (having seen the prosecution case) did the defence advance their case that: – yes such mixtures could explode – but not with their TATP initiators; their flour/hydrogen peroxide ratio was different to the three ratios we tested; and yes they did concentrate their hydrogen peroxide, but then they diluted their mixtures after having done this! Which to me made no sense whatsoever – why go to all that trouble (it’s several days’ work to concentrate the required quantity of hydrogen peroxide), just to dilute it again? But hey, what do I know? So now these questions had to be specifically addressed. Could a TATP initiator cause a flour and hydrogen peroxide mixture to explode, and, if so, under what conditions? Well the judge was (understandably) seriously pissed off by this turn of events, because it led to a whole series of discussions as to if, and how, we could now answer these new questions, and it would clearly require a significant adjournment.
Enter Qinetiq (pronounced kinetic… so why not just… oh, never mind). Qinetiq is a private company, also based at the Fort, which was originally a part of the MOD, but had been sold off to private industry. Although the EG had a lot of facilities, they did not, at the time, have the ability to make and fire significant quantities of TATP. Which Qinetiq did but, as with most parts of this saga, there were some complications. One was that the TATP had to be used on site; it could not be transported off site for safety reasons. This in turn meant that any test explosions with the flour/hydrogen peroxide mixtures, using TATP initiators, would have to be done on site. This would limit the size of the devices we could make to around 500 grams; the Fort was not a big enough site to be able to fire larger amounts than this. And then a rig would have to be devised that could hold the main charge, and separately hold the TATP initiator, and then bring them together remotely, immediately before firing. Quite rightly, safety considerations absolutely ruled out the possibility of manually adding an improvised TATP initiator to an improvised explosive charge – to do that would carry a real risk of killing someone.
Eventually, after long discussions with Qinetiq, and then the judge, a plan was agreed. At times the discussions were quite surreal – e.g. “How many hours does it take to make a remote firing rig?” The judge asked me this when I was explaining how long and complicated this new set of tests was going to be, probably three months, and giving these rigs as an example. They would have to be designed, tested and built, and several of them, since for every test that exploded, the rig would be destroyed, and a new one needed for the next test. Clearly, I thought, one lengthy part of a lengthy process then. So when he asked me this question, I was rather lost for words! I was thinking, “Why not ask me how long is a piece of string?!” Probably not the best response to a senior judge! I think I said something like, “Errm, well, I have no idea, my Lord – these are not off the shelf items, I was just trying to illustrate why the whole testing programme will take a long time.” He, of course, was just generally grumpy about the new delay, and how long it was going to be.
It was eventually agreed that it would take until early New Year 2007. We would do a variety of 500 gram explosive charges (including exactly what they said they had made), that could be remotely loaded with TATP initiators, and fired at the Fort. So finally, grudgingly, the trial was moved to start, I think, in January of 2007.
As an aside, and just as an indication of how much work is involved in all these explosive tests, half a million pounds would not be a bad estimate of how much they cost in total – all at the taxpayers’ expense. If all of the defence case had been known at the start of the judicial process, this would have been much less, maybe even half. Not just because of this, but because of the delays in general, the judge was quite scathing after the trial about these tactics by the defendants and their advisers.
Anyway, the tests were all carried out, and the results showed that TATP initiators, of the size accepted by the defendants, could reliably detonate flour and hydrogen peroxide mixtures if the hydrogen peroxide was concentrated enough. The mixture they said they had made could also explode, but not reliably and only with a medium size initiator, not with the shock from one of their TATP initiators.
However, the various Gap tests showed (to my mind anyway) that the scene material was not the same as what they now claimed they had made (a Gap test was done on that mixture too, for comparison). The Gap tests showed that the scene material was more easily exploded than the mixture claimed by the defendants, most closely matching a mixture with the most efficient flour/hydrogen peroxide ratio, but with its hydrogen peroxide slightly less concentrated. Its actual concentration was sufficient to enable it to perform as a reliable explosive, but only with a medium size initiator, larger than had been used in the devices. Close but not quite close enough. But this line is not an exact one, and nor could it ever be – such mixtures are never completely homogenous, which will affect how they react. Think of mixing custard, or mashed potato – anyone ever had lumps in that!? And the process of concentrating hydrogen peroxide by heating it up is a very inexact one, especially in a kitchen type environment – without proper equipment only a broad estimate of the strength you have achieved is possible. And if you go too far with it, you are likely only to degrade what you have already produced.
Basically, in my opinion, the defendants did everything they needed to, to make viable explosive devices – they just didn’t quite get their hydrogen peroxide concentrated enough to work on the day.
So what, you may ask, about the IRMS? Wasn’t that supposed to give a definite (and ‘properly scientific’) answer to the question of how concentrated the hydrogen peroxide in the scene mixture was? Well, yes it was. And the person who did that test got an answer of almost exactly what the Gap tests gave me, but in number form rather than just an approximate visual interpretation. So that’s job done then? Oh, if only! This IRMS discussion sits more naturally, later in this narrative. For now I will say only this: I did not have, and do not have an opinion on the IRMS work, whether it is right or wrong, done well or badly. I am not expert enough (and neither are most other people). But more than that, as far as I am concerned, it is an irrelevance. My opinions, as expressed above, and in court, rest on all the explosive tests, Gap tests, and the many other analyses that were done. For completeness, I will add here that, since the trial, FEL have developed a method for doing this analysis, for use if necessary in the future – using a well understood, reliable chemical test, that has nothing to do with IRMS. It just wasn’t available at the time.
The Trial
Finally, about eighteen months after the incidents, the trial for the 21/7 bombings got under way. (7/7 was still in the background, but taking a back seat, as there were no main defendants alive for trial in that case.) For 21/7, there were six defendants. Four had set off their devices, in which the initiators had functioned, but had failed to set off the main charge. One had abandoned his device in Little Wormwood Scrubs. I can’t remember how the sixth person was involved, but I seem to recall he was not actually in the country at the time, so maybe as an instigator, or helper.
There were a number of possible charges, some relating to the making of explosives (such as the TATP), and using explosives in public, and no doubt others. These would have been very easy to prosecute, and would result in a number of years in jail – but nowhere near life. So the prosecution chose the big one – conspiracy to murder, which would certainly allow for very long (effectively life) sentences. And as I recall it, they chose to prosecute only this charge – a high-risk strategy indeed, especially considering no one had died at any of the scenes! The reasoning was, that if you give the jury some easy options to find them guilty, they may be less inclined to find them guilty for a more complicated and difficult charge. Understandable, but definitely a brave decision – sometimes senior prosecutors really do earn their big bucks!
We were all cross-examined, as you would expect, but I don’t remember any of it being particularly difficult or aggressive. The one bit that does stick in my mind, was about my decision to dispose of the bulk of the material from the scenes. This was presented as me ‘playing the safety card’ – implying, I felt, that I had chosen to do this, with at least the thought that it would then be difficult to properly test the scene material, in case such proper testing would be of more benefit to the defence. Normally I would just take this as part of the expected ‘game playing’ that is very common in criminal trials – ours is an adversarial system, and no matter what anyone tells you, it is not an earnest search by all for the truth. Each side wants to win and they will do whatever they can, within the rules, to achieve that. But on this occasion, and for the only time I can remember, I was really annoyed by this implication. 7/7 had just happened and many people had died; all we knew was that this 21/7 material appeared to be something similar, and it was reacting vigorously and unpredictably. Added to which, as mentioned above, I personally knew of two occasions where different, but poorly understood, mixtures had reacted similarly, killing one person and seriously injuring another. And now some armchair critic (the defence expert – I shall come to this shortly), with no practical knowledge and what seemed to me a very poor understanding of explosives was implying, via his counsel, that I was being deliberately overcautious.
Well I can’t say how my answer came across, but I said words to the effect that I had personal knowledge of how dangerous it could have been; no one who worked for me was going to be put in harm’s way if I could help it; I was not prepared to speculate or theorise about these mixtures at that time, because that could kill someone; and I really couldn’t care less what someone who lacked the knowledge to do anything other than speculate and theorise, thought about this! Hopefully some irritation showed through, because I was seriously irritated. And certainly nothing came back at me.
So that was the FEL evidence. But there was still the IRMS evidence to come and then the defence expert’s evidence. Well, I had given my evidence about Gap tests and all the rest, and my opinion on the mixtures, but still it was the IRMS that everyone was interested in and impressed with as far as the concentration of the hydrogen peroxide was concerned. I should say, at this point, that the guy who carried out the IRMS analysis, also did various other analyses of the scene residues which were really useful, and added significant support to what I had said about this question. These analyses were by standard, recognised and accepted methods of analysis, and I had no problem with them. The IRMS analysis however, was none of these things.
Anyway, the IRMS evidence was presented, along with all the other analyses that had been done alongside it. Well, the other work was cross-examined, but it all seemed a bit cursory. The IRMS was really where it was all at. It must have taken at least a day to present, maybe longer. And probably no one in court understood it properly, including me. The judge probably did as well as anybody there – I think he is one of those super bright people that can just pick out the salient points of whatever he is presented with, no matter how complicated, but even he was clearly having to work very hard to make proper sense of it. So when it came to cross-examination, the defence really struggled to make much headway – not helped by the fact that their own expert also had absolutely no expertise in IRMS.
Well, what’s the problem you might well ask? The IRMS findings actually back up what I have said, and the person who did it has no connection with the FEL, it’s not FEL’s evidence, so even if it goes wrong, it’s not our problem. Largely correct. But not entirely. I will come back to this.
The Defence Expert
It is normal, where expert witness evidence is a significant part of a case, for the defence to appoint their own expert – and it is important for them to do this, expert testimony should be properly tested. This doesn’t always mean that there must be an argument in court; often much scientific evidence can be agreed between experts, prior to the trial. Indeed the judge tried very hard to get this to happen in this case, and as a result I had a number of meetings with the defence expert, but in the end, agreement over anything other than the most basic aspects proved impossible.
Why? I think there were two main stumbling blocks. First, he was an academic, with absolutely no knowledge of the forensic process. The IRMS guy was also not a forensic scientist, but I believe he at least had an awareness of some of the concepts of forensic science. But the defence expert seemed unaware that forensic science even had any concepts. The second stumbling block was that he started from a position, at least as it seemed to me, that as a professor and senior academic, his job was to help out these well-meaning but slightly second-tier government scientists, with all and any science in this case. Second-tier because otherwise they’d be top research scientists such as himself, obviously.
In his defence, my recollection is that defending counsel had tried hard to get an established forensic, or explosives scientist to act for them, and had been turned down by every such person they had approached. So they had had to widen their circle, to include people who had neither a forensic, nor an explosives background, and to be fair, initially he had also been reluctant to get involved, but eventually he was persuaded. There was no malice or bad faith in him, but as a senior scientist he should have recognised that he was the one in a new environment, and that he needed to learn and adapt to it. But in my opinion he failed to grasp that, and simply behaved as what he probably was – the kindly professor who did the teaching, while those around him did the learning. Unless they were his peers, which we weren’t because we weren’t senior academics.
So, as part of his lack of understanding of the forensic scientist’s role, he seemed to think that he had to disagree with every aspect of the prosecution scientific evidence. Whereas what he should have been doing was examining every bit on its scientific merits. Which he was also poorly equipped to do, since he was largely outside his own field of expertise. So in the end, we were unable to come to any sensible agreement about any significant part of my evidence.
Interestingly, he seemed to find it much easier to agree with some of the IRMS guy’s evidence, presumably because he was a fellow senior academic and therefore a peer, and thought the IRMS work was largely quite impressive. This was despite the fact that he had no expertise in IRMS whatsoever, as even the judge noted at one point!
Anyway, the prosecution had finished its scientific evidence, now it was the turn of the defence. And it did not go well for their expert. He did not provide his reports when he was supposed to, he did not have proper notes to back up the experiments he had done, he had used the wrong methods, those that he had used were not validated to demonstrate that they actually worked, a concept he seemed unaware of, or at least entirely uninterested in. And when it came to his cross-examination, he really suffered. Now, I can’t help but feel some sympathy for him; it is frequently an uncomfortable place to be, and given how unprepared he was for it, it must have been a very bad experience for him. Indeed, I believe I was told afterwards by someone, that he had said he would never touch anything to do with court ever again, and woul
dn’t have done so in the first place if he had had any idea of what was in store for him.
Having said that, my sympathy was severely limited by the fact that he apparently made little or no effort to look up at least some basic parameters of the various sciences he was talking about. At one point in his evidence he had talked about ‘ideal explosives’ but the way he had used this term made me wonder if he actually knew what that meant, or if he thought it was just a general term for ‘best’. So when I was asked about his evidence by the prosecution counsel, I mentioned this, saying I couldn’t quite believe he would not know (or have checked up) that this had a specific meaning, but if he wanted some questions to ask, that might be one. Which he did – and so the professor squirmed as it transpired that no, he didn’t know it had a specific meaning, nor what that might be. And this was just one small part of his cross-examination. Very uncomfortable I’m sure, especially for someone unused to being challenged on his own knowledge, by people he did not consider peers – but then he should have at least bothered to do some reading up beforehand. So, like I said, I had some sympathy, but not a great deal.
Millie
Another brief digression here, nothing to do with the trial, just another memory from the time that has just popped into my head – but I just feel like giving my cat, Millie, a mention! Around this time I was going into court on most days, not to give evidence, I was finished with that, but to be there to advise the prosecution counsel, if he needed it, while he was cross-examining the defence expert. Well I think it may have been a half-term holiday, because my wife (who was a teacher) was away visiting her sister, who was also a teacher. As I was getting ready to go one morning, I noticed our cat in the back garden, lying on the lawn. She was an elderly cat by then but was still getting along OK – but she hadn’t come in for her food, and lying on the lawn was not something she would normally do. So I went out to have a look, see if she would come in for some food. Well she got up as I reached her, but showed no interest in coming in so I left her there to carry on sorting myself out – and noticed she had just laid down again. This was definitely not right, so I went back out, picked her up and carried her in to her basket, where she just lay down again. A quandary now – I should take her to the vet, but I had to go to the court, and there was no one else around to take her. So I thought, I will go to court, tell them my cat is poorly, and see if I can get away early and then take her to the vet. Well, they were all very sympathetic, if I could just stay for a couple of hours that would probably be OK, and I could go then. So I did that, got home about midday – and she was still lying in the same position I had left her in – not a good sign. Worse when I touched her, she was cold – and stiff! Well this was a bit of a shock – I really hadn’t realised how bad she was – and a very sad moment; I certainly did shed a few tears. But she had had a good life, and I think she must have died very soon after I put her in her basket, so I don’t think she suffered much, if at all. But what now? I thought about putting her in the garden, but it was only a small one and I would have struggled to dig a hole big enough in the space available. OK then – maybe the vet would take her? Is that something people do with dead pets? So I phoned them and said my cat had died, could they deal with it? Then followed a somewhat surreal saga – sad for sure, but (as it seemed to me) also a bit funny in a dark sort of way. A moment of silence on the phone, then, “Oh this must be a mistake, none of our cats here has died.” Silence from me while I worked that out. Then I said, “No, my cat is not with you, she is here with me, and she’s dead.” Another moment, then, “Oh, sorry, I see – are you sure she’s dead?” “Errm, well she’s cold, completely unresponsive – and very stiff!” “Oh I see, well yes, of course, bring her in and we’ll have a look.” I wasn’t sure about the need for the ‘have a look’, but I let that go. So, I got her vet box out to put her in – but now she wouldn’t fit, because of the rigor mortis! I struggled for a bit, but finally had to put her in upside down – with her legs all poking out of the top of the basket! And in that undignified pose I got her to the vet and carried her into the reception – attracting some strange looks from other people there, while I waited for someone ahead of me to be dealt with. And after a few moments I was dealt with – very quickly, when the receptionist worked out what it was that was attracting attention from other people in reception! So goodbye Millie, and rather sadly home to phone Vanessa. Who was also naturally upset, but then quite relieved that she hadn’t been there to have had to deal with it by herself, which she otherwise would have been. And just to round this little saga off, when I got back to the court the next day, at one point someone remembered about me going off early to take my cat to the vet, and asked, as you do, how my cat was. Which caused a moment’s slightly stunned silence when I replied something like – “Oh… err… well, not good really. Well, actually she was dead!” But then I related the story, which sort of broke the tension, and then we all got back to the business of the ongoing trial.