UK court fines ‘conspiracy theorist’ blogger $58,000
Two survivors of the 2017 Manchester Arena bombing were awarded £45,000 ($58,000) in damages on Friday after they won a harassment case against a conspiracy theorist who had claimed the attack was staged by the UK government, media have reported.
Martin Hibbert and his daughter, Eve, sued Richard Hall, a former television producer and a self-described journalist for harassment and data protection, and won the case in London’s High Court last month.
Hibbert was paralyzed from the waist down and Eve, then 14, suffered a severe brain injury in the attack at Manchester Arena in 2017, when suicide bomber Salman Abedi detonated a home-made device outside an Ariana Grande concert, killing 22 people and injuring hundreds of others.
Hall published videos and a book about the Manchester Arena bombing, where he claimed that the terrorist act had been staged, and that the people who had died were living overseas or were already dead before the event, without providing evidence.
In court, Hall reportedly insisted his actions, including filming Eve outside her home, were in the public interest and claimed the pair were “crisis actors” in a state-orchestrated hoax where no one was “genuinely injured,” while “millions of people” had “bought a lie.”
Hibberts’ lawyer Jonathan Price said during the trial that the father and daughter had been among the closest to the terrorist when he detonated the bomb and that the attack had changed their lives “in every conceivable way.”
“They have both suffered life-changing injuries from which they will never recover,” Price was quoted by UK media as saying.
Judge Karen Steyn ruled in October that Hall’s conduct amounted to harassment, saying she found him to be “unreflective and insensitive to the level of distress likely to be caused by his persistent attempts to discredit what those who have suffered so tragically in the attack say about it.”
According to her, Hall “abused media freedom” to publish false allegations based on the “flimsiest of analytical techniques, and dismissing the obvious, tragic reality to which so many ordinary people have attested.”
The judge this week awarded Hibbert and his daughter £22,500 each following a hearing.
Hibbert told reporters that the ruling was a “comprehensive victory,” adding that the case “sends out a clear message to conspiracy theorists that you cannot ignore all acceptable evidence and harass innocent people.”
