A detective inspector on duty during the Hillsborough football disaster has agreed that South Yorkshire Police solicitors directed police to \u201csanitise\u201d evidence.<\/p>\n
John James Charles was giving evidence on Monday of this week into fresh inquests into deaths resulting from the disaster. Some 96 Liverpool football fans died as a result of a crush at theSheffield stadium on 15 April 1989.<\/p>\n
Charles\u2019 handwritten statement, written days after the disaster, described \u201cunbelievable chaos\u201d in the gym where dead and injured fans were taken.<\/p>\n
But a later typed up statement referred to a \u201csomewhat chaotic\u201d and then \u201cdisorganised\u201d situation.<\/p>\n
When asked why this change occurred Charles said, \u201cPerhaps to play down the chaotic situation.\u201d He agreed that the new version was \u201cwatered down\u201d and that timings in his typed statement were \u201ctotally incorrect\u201d.<\/p>\n
Taken altogether Charles said \u201cI can quite see the whole ethos of the statement has been changed\u201d.<\/p>\n
He admitted that, \u201cThe first account is my most accurate account\u201d.<\/p>\n
Mr Weatherby QC, representing 22 bereaved families, questioned Charles about his statements. He highlighted an action note that had been entered into the HOLMES police computer system.<\/p>\n
The note was from June 1990 and appeared to contain an instruction to Norman Bettison from Belinda Norcliffe. Norcliffe \u201cwas a lawyer or somebody who worked for Hammond Suddard the lawyers instructed by South Yorkshire Police\u201d.<\/p>\n
Bettison was a chief inspector in South Yorkshire Police who was part of a group of officers dealing with Hillsborough evidence.<\/p>\n
Charles agreed that the note appeared to be \u201can instruction resulting from a call from South Yorkshire Police\u2019s lawyers to Mr Bettison\u201d.<\/p>\n
The note said that Hammond Suddards was faxing over a statement from Nurse Eccleston, who had helped injured fans in the wake of the crush. It described the statement as \u201ccritical of the conditions at the temporary mortuary\u201d.<\/p>\n
It went on, \u201cRebuttal evidence is required. Statements required from officers in charge of the mortuary, for example, Chief Inspector Charles.\u201d<\/p>\n
Charles said he was \u201cnot aware of this document\u201d. Weatherby said it was \u201ca direction to fit up evidence\u201d. Charles replied, \u201cI would say it\u2019s a direction, as you put it, to sanitise, remove stuff that people don\u2019t want to come out.\u201d<\/p>\n
The inquests continue.<\/p>\n
This piece<\/a> was reprinted by RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission or license.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A detective inspector on duty during the Hillsborough football disaster has agreed that South Yorkshire Police solicitors directed police to \u201csanitise\u201d evidence. John James Charles was giving evidence on Monday of this week into fresh inquests into deaths resulting from the disaster. Some 96 Liverpool football fans died as a result of a crush at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":141440,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487,1615],"tags":[819,778,820,804],"class_list":{"0":"post-141439","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"category-uk-news","9":"tag-cliff","10":"tag-mark-keywords","11":"tag-picket","12":"tag-politics-2"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141439","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141439"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141439\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/141440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}