Secret Policing dribbles

[Michael Barwell]

Here's a curious one, all those "cocaine" refs I get -

Police doctored GPS data which saw fishing boat crew jailed for £53million drugs bust: New evidence shows the men couldn't have dropped bags of cocaine into the sea - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-...-bust.html

· Police electronics expert meddled with evidence in drug smuggling case
· Five men were accused of picking up bags filled with £53million of cocaine
· But new evidence shows officer altered GPS data to 'back up prosecutors'
· Men's lawyers are now calling on case to be referred to the Court of Appeal
By DAVID ROSE FOR THE MAIL ON SUNDAY
PUBLISHED: 01:38, 3 July 2016 | UPDATED: 01:50, 3 July 2016

A police electronics expert made a clumsy attempt to doctor' vital evidence that led to the conviction of four fishermen and their friend for drug smuggling, according to legal documents seen by this newspaper.
The five men were accused of picking up rucksacks containing 560 lb of cocaine worth £53 million in the middle of the English Channel, before dropping them overboard off the south coast of the Isle of Wight for someone else to recover.
At their trial, data from the satellite tracking device on their boat, the Galwad-y-Mor, appeared to damn them.
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Five men were accused of picking up rucksacks containing 560 lb of cocaine worth £53 million in the middle of the English Channel on the boat Galwad-y-Mor (pictured)
But new evidence shows that after officers from the Serious and Organised Crime Agency (Soca) seized the vessel's Olex GPS machine, an officer tried to alter internal databases, apparently to make them conform more closely to the prosecution's theory.
But he not only failed to achieve his goal, he also left a computerised fingerprint' revealing how he tried to interfere with the crucial testimony.
And in another bombshell development, it can be revealed that the Galwad-y-Mor could not have dumped the drugs at the location alleged by prosecutors, because the water there is too shallow and the vessel would have run aground.

The fresh evidence is included in a dossier from the men's lawyers to the Criminal Cases Review Commission, which is being asked to order a new appeal.
At the heart of the case is Isle of Wight crab and lobster fisherman Jamie Green, who owned the 39ft Galwad-y-Mor. Found guilty by a majority verdict in 2011, he was jailed for 24 years, together with casual labourer Zoran Dresic and Mr Green's lifelong friend, Jonathan Beere, who runs a scaffolding business. Crewmen Danny Payne and Scott Birtwistle got 18 and 14 years respectively.
All were staunch family men with no previous convictions, and there were grave doubts among the close-knit fishing community on the Isle of Wight that they could be guilty.
The Mail on Sunday published the first of two investigative articles on the case in 2014. In a further exposé last year, we revealed that one of the prosecution's central claims could not be true that the Galwad-y-Mor picked up the cocaine on the storm-lashed night of May 29, 2010, when it crossed the wake of the MV Oriane, a Brazilian cargo ship from which, supposedly, the drug-filled rucksacks were thrown into the sea.
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New evidence shows that after officers from the Serious and Organised Crime Agency seized the vessel's Olex GPS machine, an officer tried to alter internal databases
Data from the AIS satellite tracking system installed on the Oriane, which was made available to the prosecution but not disclosed to the defence nor shown to the jury, showed that the Galwad-y-Mor never crossed the Oriane's wake, but at its closest was several hundred yards away.
Moreover, according to a report by the Portsmouth Marine Laboratory on drift and current, anything thrown from the Oriane would have drifted away from the Galwad- y-Mor, not towards it, making the alleged pick-up impossible.
The fishing boat's course can be determined from its own highly sophisticated GPS-linked tracking and navigation system, known as Olex. It is a new analysis of a cloned' copy of the Olex hard drive that has led to allegations that Soca investigators tried to tamper with it to improve their case.