WATCH YOUR BACK...
Gun thug’s threat to man cleared of Jill Dando murder
felt uncomfortable in the area. He says he fears what will happen to him on his rare visits back to Britain.
He said: “I do not feel free. I think about this case every single day.
“Every time I come to England, the officers are polite but they’ll be noting down my presence, every time I go back, and monitoring what I’m doing.
“I live looking over my shoulder. Nobody should have to live like that.”
In court prosecutors produced a photo they said showed Barry wearing a mask and holding a starting pistol.
It was in his old flat that police seized a jacket with a tiny amount of gunpowder residue in its pocket.
The speck was the only piece of forensic evidence against Barry.
But in his retrial the “neutral” particle was deemed so inconsequential that it was inadmissible as evidence.
There have been claims that police handling of the jacket could have led to it being cross-contaminated.
The murder remains unsolved. Barry said: “Ten years after being acquitted and I’m still trying to get away from it.
“Me and my family have not been exonerated for this crime and we have not got closure. Physically, I’m exhausted. “I’m always looking at every angle of the case, trying to get closure.
“But I just cannot make sense of it. I was acquitted but I’m serving a life sentence for a crime I did not commit.”
As pressure piled on the Met, Barry was arrested a year after Jill was gunned down. Barry and sister Michelle Bates, whose book Stand Against Injustice is out in September, feel he was handpicked by police.
Barry has learning difficulties, Asperger’s, epilepsy, ADHD, and has brain damage. Yet he was jailed for a murder believed to have been committed by a master assassin.
“The police tailor-made the case to fit it around my neck,” said Barry. “They thought it would just go away and solve the Dando fiasco.
“But I didn’t know who Jill Dando was. I’d never seen her... Her family are victims too – there has been no justice for them.”
Barry thinks police do not “have the will” to find the killers. He added: “The innuendo... did he get off on a technicality? It’s soul destroying when you know you’re innocent.” The implication he was “not innocent enough” in his compensation bid has stuck with Barry.
He said: “There’s no halfway between innocent and guilty. For closure’s sake, I strive towards getting my compensation hearing back in court.”
Barry added that he used to have a life and friends but it was all destroyed by his years in jail. He welled up and his voice broke as he recalled the moment he was acquitted.
He said: “How do you react to such a decision? It’s elation. But 10 years on, I do not feel like a free man.” The Serious Case Review Group last reviewed the murder in 2016. The Met said it “fully investigated the circumstances”. It added: “Two trials took place and the investigation was subject to an internal review.
“If any new information comes to our attention this will be investigated.”