SOME QUESTIONS AND THE ”WELSH CONNECTION”?

MIA on the hunt for answers to several highly relevant questions and also introducing a parallel case from Wales that bears uncanny similarities.

“I have been through the submitted evidence there is nothing in it to suggest this was anything other than made in Scotland” Yours for Scotland A new Constitution 20/2/22.

I have also been through all the evidence and there are quite a few things that do not make sense at all if this was only made in Scotland. There were so many flaws in the process that unless Sturgeon, the civil service and elements of the SNP had not been fiercely protected by the COPFS and the state itself, they would have been chucked out on the spot if not sent to prison.

For instance, why wasn’t Liz Lloyd demanded by the Fabiani Farce to declare in person like the rest of the civil servants and was allowed to get off so lightly with some watered down statement that we cannot even be sure if she wrote it herself or was written on her behalf?

Why was there coaching of UK civil servants seen as necessary?

Why wasn’t McKinnon demanded to give evidence either in person or via video like everybody else and she was allowed to do so by phone so nobody could assess if she was alone in the room, she was reading from a script or if the MI5 was giving her the answers?

What on earth was an ex-MI5, crown agent doing in COPFS throwing the police into a goose chase trying to stitch up Mr Salmond? How many crown agents are there in England’s prosecution service? Why is one in Scotland at all?

Why the rush to involve the Metropolitan Police in the investigation of Mr Salmond? And who had the authority to bring London Police into the matter? That could not have been somebody in Scotland.

Why upon Mr David Davies presenting his statement in the house of commons showing the damage Sturgeon was doing by keeping the head of the COPFS in the cabinet avoiding the separation of powers, nothing was made to enforce separation of the powers when that problem does not exist at UK level and when the problem with not separating the powers has been known since even before the Scottish gov was reconvened? Was this a back door being left open deliberately by the state to get its hand in and manipulate the process in case of need?

Why when Douglas Ross reported Leslie Evans to her line manager Mark Sedwill in August 2020 for refusing to comment on claims that female officials were advised not to work alone with Alex Salmond, we heard nothing of it? 

Why weren’t all the civil servants involved on this sacked by Mark Sedwill once it was clear that their botched job had costed Scotland’s taxpayers millions of pounds? Mark Sedwill was the head of the civil service and yet all these people went scot free despite evident breaches of the civil service code of conduct. He was ultimately accountable for all this.

Why didn’t Mark Sedwill instruct an immediate formal investigation into the conduct of the civil service in Scotland and the permanent secretary and when the leak to the Daily Record took place, as there was an investigation when memogate took place while Carmichael was Secretary of State for Scotland?

Why did Mark Sedwill leave his post as head of the Civil Service in September 2020 at the time when the Holyrood inquiry MSPs asked the Court of session to release key legal papers from Mr Salmond’s civil case, and when Leslie Evans was forced to apologise for giving wrong information to the parliamentary inquiry, when it was discovered that Liz Lloyd did take part in meetings about the case, despite Evans having said before she did not (from Holyrood, 10 September 2020, written by Liam Kirkaldi)?

Who instructed the COPFS to supress the information of the whatsApp messages of the vietnam group or the procedure? Who controls the COPFS? Who controls the crown agent within the COPFS?

Why would the UK government/state had any interest in keeping those messages secret unless they showed a clear link to something that was not ithe SNP or even Scotland?

Why there was a collusion to keep the names of the alphabetes secret when it is not mandatory in Scotland’s cases?

Why was Mark Sedwill parachuted to the house of lords In September 2020 despite having spectacularly failed in his duty to make the civil servants in Scotland follow the civil service code of conduct and despite the civil service in Scotland under his watch, breaching the GDPR by leaking confidential information to a newspaper?

How could Mark Sedwill turn a blind eye to the superlative incompetence of Leslie Evans conducting the investigation into who effected the leak to the daily record?

The allegations against Mr Salmond in November 2017 were not an isolated case. During October and November 2017 more than 12 allegations of sexual nature emerged against politicians of the UK. Interestingly, some of the accusations against politicians of the labour party were made by the victim but never disclosing the name of the accused, just like Monica Lennon did in Scotland. In other words, they seemed to be more to give weight and credibility to the movement rather than to expose anybody in particular. 

Mr Salmond was the only one that, as far as I know, was dragged into a criminal court case, but was not the only one subjected to a unfair and seemingly unlawful complaints procedure. The other case was that of Carl Sargent, But these false allegations and unlawful complaint procedure resulted in the death of this politician. Yet, nobody was held responsible for that. The “procedure” to which Mr Sargent was subjected to started almost at the same time as that of Mr Salmond.

The first complaint against Mr Salmond was received if I am not mistaken around the 5th November 2017. 2017 the Scottish government had created the first version of a complaints procedure that could be applied in respect of former Ministers on 7 November 2017. But by then, and if I am not mistaken, allegedly, people involved in the procedure had already interacted with the complainants. From the 7th November, a frantic rush to prepare and redact a final version of this procedure started.

Mr Sargent took on his own life on the 7th November 2017. the family released Mr Sargents’ lawyers letters on the 9th November 2017. If the civil servants involved in the botched complaints procedure against Mr Salmond had read those letters, they already would have known at that point that their complaints procedure in Scotland did not have a leg to stand on in a court of law, that it was unlawful and therefore could explain their continuous attempts at obfuscation later on and particularly at hiding information relative prior contact between the investigating officer and the two complainants, which led their furious counsel to encourage the SGov, in the strongest terms, to concede defeat.

How likely is that those involved in the procedure, the lord advocate, the copfs etc, knew already before the civil case even started that the procedure was unlawful on the basis of the letters sent by Mr Sargent’s lawyers? My suspicion is that very likely. Can it be credible at all that a competent head of the civil service was not aware of these letters and would not be seeking to protect the reputation of the civil service and from potential liability following a botched procedure of this calibre?

There are many parallelisms between the way Welsh gov conducted their “investigation” against Mr Sargent and the way Sturgeon’s SNP with the collusion of the UK civil service conducted that of Mr Salmond. It is as if both investigations and botched complaints procedures had been taken from the exact same rushed script. Only that after the death of Mr Sargent, the civil servants in Scotland were in a frantic rush to cover their arses and redact a somewhat, believable procedure.

I recommend to read the letters from Mr Sargent’s lawyers (published in 9 November 2017 in the magazine Welsh Oline “Carl Sargeant’s family release solicitors’ letters and accuse Welsh Labour of not giving him the decency of defending himself.”)

Mr Sargent’s family accused the Wales’ FM his office of “clearly prejudicing what is allegedly an independent inquiry” 

The letters also warn Mr Sargeant feared “the evidence of the witnesses was being manipulated” by the interview with the complainants conducted by Mr Jones’ office, and his special advisor Matt Greenough, just as it happened with Mr Salmond’s.

Mr Sargent’s family decided to speak out “in light of the continued unwillingness to clarify the nature of the allegations made against Carl”. Just as it happened to Mr Salmond.

This is the full text of Mr Sargent’s family statement.

“The family wish the release into the public domain, correspondence between Carl’s solicitors and the Labour Party on Monday of this week (6 November 2017).

“Up to the point of his tragic death on Tuesday morning Carl was not informed of any of the detail of the allegations against him, despite requests and warnings regarding his mental welfare.

“The correspondence also discloses the solicitor’s concern that media appearances by the First Minister on Monday were prejudicing the inquiry. 

“The family wish to disclose the fact that Carl maintained his innocence and he categorically denied any wrongdoing. The distress of not being able to defend himself properly against these unspecified allegations meant he was not afforded common courtesy, decency or natural justice.”

In one of the letters, Mr Sargent’s lawyers writes:

“”It would seem that already a large number of people have spoken to the complainant or complainants yet we still have received no disclosure of the complainant or complaints.

“On Friday, the First Minister advised our client he could not provide details of the complaint or complainants other than that the FM special advisor had spoken to the complainant or complainants to verify the complaint.

“There appears to be a very real possibility that the evidence of the witnesses is being manipulated and numerous conversations with the witnesses by various members of the First Minister’s office at the very least must create uncertainties about the credibility of any evidence. We would ask that a full and complete log of contact with the witnesses be maintained that the details of the complainants be disclosed and the content of our letter addressed as a matter of urgency”.

Similarly to Mr Salmond’s case, while Mr Sargent’s name was plastered across the front pages, the names of the alleged accusers were not and were given anonymity even before it was ever proven if they were in fact telling the truth or not or even if they existed at all.

In another parallelism with Mr Salmond’s case, there were plenty of apparatchicks claiming these women were “victims”, when the victim in all this botched handling of the process was always Mr Sargent, who was never explained what he had been accused of nor given the opportunity to defend himself properly.

The Welsh first minister had announced an independent inquiry into how he handled Mr Sargent’s sacking. This was on the 10 November 2017. When did Nicola Sturgeon handed over to the Permanent Secretary full control over the complaints procedure?

Mr Sargent’s wife challenged the legality of inquiry, and expressed publicly her concerns that the investigation could become a “cover-up”, just as the Fabiani Farce became in the case of Mr Salmond.

Mrs Sargent high court action was launched to challenge “unlawful” decision-making in relation to the investigation’s operational protocol. The decisions in question include “the barring of the family’s lawyers from being able to question witnesses”, another “to allow the independent investigator to bar the family from hearings”, and also a move to “prevent oral evidence from being heard in public”.

In April 2020, Mr Sargent’s family agreed to settle so the planned QC-led investigation into the actions of First Minister Carwyn Jones before the death of Carl Sargeant was cancelled. Part of the agreement was that the Welsh gov had to foot the entire bill for the legal costs.

All very similar to the procedure in the case of Mr Salmond. The same “mistakes” were done. The Welsh former government was saved by a settlement out of court that stopped the investigation. The Scottish counterpart was saved by the Fabiani’s farce and the active suppression of information by the CoPFS. 

It is not credible that these two processes were taking place almost simultaneously in Scotland and Wales and that were almost a fotocopy of each other if this was only a Scottish matter.

In any case, in the same way there seems to be an unhealthy proximity between Sturgeon’s crew and the Uk civil service, there is also an unhealthy proximity between the way Sturgeon leads the party and the way labour is being run.

MY COMMENTS

I hope there is a growing realisation that the questions and investigations into the disgusting fit up of Former First Minister Alex Salmond will never go away until the truth of the organised plot forces the people responsible to admit their guilt or are totally exposed as being responsible. Justice and truth must and will prevail.

I am, as always

Yours for Scotland

BEAT THE CENSORS

Sadly some sites had given up on being pro Indy sites and have decided to become merely pro SNP sites where any criticism of the Party Leader or opposition to the latest policy extremes, results in censorship being applied. This, in the rather over optimistic belief that this will suppress public discussion on such topics. My regular readers have expertly worked out that by regularly sharing articles on this site defeats that censorship and makes it all rather pointless. I really do appreciate such support and free speech in Scotland is remaining unaffected by their juvenile censorship. Indeed it is has become a symptom of weakness and guilt. Quite encouraging really.

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