It seems like the most drawn out case and each time with little to no evidence
Did the case really need to have been as long and drawn out as it has proved to be. In the real world very probably not; and in the real world evidence for five indictments for serious sexual offences has probably never been dismissed as peremptorily as this evidence has been before all the evidence has been heard and evaluated.
The delays are possibly more by design than accident as CB's legal team continued seeding an unrelated case to these five on trial, well into the mix.
One of the witnesses whose evidence seems to have been trashed out of hand by the judges’ decision to cancel the arrest warrant is a serving Scotland Yard detective. Why would that be?
His presence wasn't really required to convince the court that HB is a criminal who was known to CB which rather glosses over the point that
- if HB is to be deemed untrustworthy because he is a criminal
- then CB must be deemed equally untrustworthy because he is a criminal too His role was of interest to CB’s legal team who had called him to give evidence. Nothing to do with the five cases in hand, but all to do with possible access to case files in a case for which no charges have been laid as yet.
My opinion
The detective was answering the phones on May 18, 2017 on a hotline set up to assist in a missing child case. He told the court that a witness who had already testified in the serious sexual cases under trial had left a voicemail on the hotline phones he was answering.
‘It was from a male by the sound of his voice, he spoke good English, and he asked to speak to DE, he said he had information and he left a Greek mobile number.
‘I then rang this Greek mobile number and spoke to a male I now know to be HB, within that conversation he referred to himself as Lars, and he gave information in relation to the MM investigation.
‘As a result of that information, we conducted other inquiries and searches and this became a line of enquiry.’
The SY detective said HB travelled to London in 2018 to give a statement to police, in which he claimed to have seen CB at a 2008 festival.
CB complained of not feeling well. He said he had eaten something dodgy,’ he added.
‘But he was happy for the statement to be taken.
He was only with us for a matter of a couple of hours. He had travelled a long way and still wanted to help police.’
The detective said that the statement was then shared with German and Portuguese authorities.
Two years later, German prosecutors named CB as their top suspect in the toddler’s disappearance – CB has long denied wrongdoing.
The tip-off led investigators to their prime suspect.
metro.co.uk
www.dailymail.co.uk
