BARRY GEORGE - Al Qaeda Agent..?

When Jill Dando was murdered in April 1999, she was being featured on the front cover of that week's Radio Times magazine, wearing motorbike leatherwear and with “Vroooooom” printed in large letters across the cover. The back cover of this issue featured an advertisement for crime novels, with a full-page display of paperback book covers. At the top of the advert were the words, “COULDN’T YOU JUST MURDER…” printed in large red shattered letters, and below, amongst the paperback covers, was the punch line: “…any 3 of these books?” which was printed in very small letters that were difficult to see among the illustrated book covers. Anyone reading that issue in the week before her murder, when it was issued, and holding the magazine up before him such as one might read it in a waiting room, would have presented to the room at large the collective effect: “Couldn’t you just murder…[Photo - Jill Dando].”

This coincidence cannot be ignored as a clue to the Jill Dando murder, especially as it offers an insight into motive and opportunity in a crime that didn’t seem to have any. The victim of the murder was a national public figure who was associated with the resolution of such crimes, and in this context she was being displayed in a hypocrisy of public attitudes to crimes of this kind. The coincidence of the Radio Times cover suggests that this was why she was targeted, and that she was selected for the attack the week before her murder, when that week's issue of the Radio Times was on sale. It indicates a show murder, a public outrage with a political motive by someone who was scornful of her public and her standing and her professional activities.

The possibility of a political motive in the murder was recognized by the police and press at the time, and in the early days of the investigation, the Serbs were questioned by the press, because Serbia had recently been bombed by Prime Minister Tony Blair. The Serbs did not think that this bombing would have been the motive for the murder and the idea was dropped. Subsequent events have showed that a more likely explanation was Iraq and Al Qaeda, because Tony Blair had earlier bombed Baghdad in 1997, and this bombing was politically outrageous. It amounted to the bullying of a head of state by another head of state, and it was an attack against the people of Iraq and the economy of a nation that was cash-strapped from trade sanctions that had been imposed on it by those responsible for this bombing.

The assassination of Jill Dando was clearly the work of an expert who must have arranged to meet her at the time and place that she was shot, or else had known that she was going to visit there to collect her mail. She was in the process of selling the house. Witnesses described seeing two men of Mediterranean appearance running away from the scene of the crime.

The bombings of Baghdad ultimately led to the September 11 attacks, perhaps also the Potters Bar train crash (which the evidence suggested was sabotage), and also perhaps the foot and mouth outbreak in the UK, which did not behave like a natural outbreak, and it attacked our trade in the same year that the United States Trade Centre was attacked. There is plenty of justification for assuming that the Jill Dando murder was a part of the troubles arising from this bombing.

The citizen currently performing the role of Jill Dando’s convicted murderer in our jails is notable for being uncommonly disorganized in his mind and his life, and his flat was a shambles. Barry George lived in a fantasy world, and such people are never proficient in the real one. He is in complete contrast to the killer himself, who was the epitome of organized efficiency. The motive that the prosecution gave for their case against him was an obsession with Jill Dando, who lived locally, but there was no evidence for this in his flat, or among his horde of newspapers, or in his history, to justify this. Their motive was purely fictional. It was created by the prosecution to fit George to the crime for the benefit of their prosecution, and both were worthless.

The forensic evidence against him consisted of a single speck of gunpowder, which surely could not have occurred by accidental contamination, as it was a solitary particle and it was found in a jacket pocket where the prosecution case contended that Barry George could keep a gun. The suggestion behind this being that this gun would then be the gun appropriate to their prosecution. This evidence had the same value as the motive.

Another aspect of the case against Barry George was his odd behaviour when he learned of the murder. He asked people to vouch for his whereabouts at the time that it happened. The reason for this behaviour was that he was an epileptic, who frequently experienced short-term memory loss, and he had been intimidated by the police for many years, who stopped and questioned him whenever a crime happened in his vicinity. He seems to have been picked out as a "vulnerable" by the police because of his disability.

Another aspect of the case against him was the notorious "SAS" photograph, which was found among the shambles in his flat. George was well-known in his community to have a fixation with the SAS. He was a dreamer and a fantasist, who visualized himself as being an SAS man, and he had dressed himself up as such for this photograph. Dreamers always dream of being the opposite of what they actually are, and the opposite of Barry George's disorganized inanity was the precision, daring and efficiency that is associated with the SAS. These qualities of the SAS correspond with the immaculate skill of Jill Dando's assassin, so that the detectives have fitted him up to his own fantasy in their prosecution.

Barry George was picked up fairly soon after the murder, but none of the eyewitnesses identified him at identity parades. However a very determined woman identified him 17 months after the murder, but the man that she had witnessed was seen cleaning a car nearby Dando's house some four hours before the attack, and Barry George could not drive a car. And George did not match or resemble the descriptions given by the eyewitness of strange men seen in the area at the time of the murder.

Barry George is the victim of an exploitative prosecution, so that he is another victim of Thatcherism in our courts of justice. The prosecution looked suspicious from the start. It began with the police at a loss for a suspect in a high profile murder case, and under media pressure to find one. So they returned to someone they had dismissed a year or so earlier, and pulled him in for questioning again; then they took him to the magistrates for leave for further questioning (where apparently they did not have to justify their request), then took him back again for leave for further questioning (ditto), and then, at the very point where they must legally release the suspect or charge him, and when the guilty party, having got this far, must surely hold out, they charged him. Their behaviour shows that they fancied their suspect but that they hadn't got anything usable out of him during questioning. And this was prior to the presentation in court of forensic evidence that logically indicates a fraud.

A comparison between the profiles of the convict and the killer shows that they do not match, and an examination of the evidence that fitted them together in court shows that it is not reliable. The jury should at least have rejected the speck of gunpowder on the grounds that it looked suspicious in the light of the other evidence. A jury should never accept evidence that suggests a fraud.

Barry George was convicted of the murder in July 2001, and he was in prison when the September 11 attacks occurred. The events following the murder show that we must nearly have got it right at the time when we questioned the Serbs, and that if the police had waited, we would have realized by now that the most likely explanation for the murder must have been the events following the bombing of Baghdad in 1997. Instead, we have a convict in our jails who is only appropriate for a pretentious justice system, whose nature as a murderer is pretentious, whose role is that of an actor, whose prosecution was exploitist and untrustworthy, and who, like the exploiters who have taken over our TV service and our government, is not qualified to be where he is.

June 2006

Barry George was acquitted in August 2008.

For the Algebra of Justice click here.

For the Wearside Jack case click here.

For the Fadi Nasri case click here.

blackneck@gawab.com