Salmond threatens to go public with ‘conspiracy’ claims after acquittal
Former first minister says he will speak out once pandemic is over after being cleared of 13 charges
ALEX SALMOND yesterday sent a warning shot to Nicola Sturgeon by stating he would go public with an alleged conspiracy against him after being cleared of 13 sex offences.
Speaking outside the High Court in Edinburgh following his acquittal, the former SNP leader and first minister said he had been prevented from leading “certain evidence” to the trial but pledged that it would now “see the light of day.”
Jim Sillars, the SNP’S former deputy leader, told The Daily Telegraph that Mr Salmond had shown him evidence he had been “set up”. He said there were “lots of questions for some people at the top level of the SNP”.
Although he did not provide details, it can now be reported that senior SNP figures feared that he was intent on “bringing down” Ms Sturgeon on the way to clearing his name.
Sue Ruddick, the SNP’S chief operating officer, was sent the warning in a text message by a Yes campaigner and SNP politician, one of nine women who accused him of sex offences.
Mr Salmond’s legal team wanted to submit this and a series of text messages they claimed showed the Scottish Government had orchestrated the criminal prosecution to “discredit” him. Gordon Jackson, his QC, told the court that one of the women accusing Mr Salmond had a “personal motivation” in this campaign and was “doing her bit to beef up the criminal charges”.
But the text messages were not shown to the jury after two judges ruled that they were irrelevant to the criminal charges he faced.
His warning threatens to further expose deep divisions between the Salmond and Sturgeon camps in the SNP, which now threaten to spill over into an all-out civil war. She also faces questions from a Holyrood inquiry after evidence at the trial undermined her claim she only found out about the complaints when Mr Salmond visited her home on April 2 2018.
Ms Sturgeon yesterday said the verdict “must be respected” but the coronavirus pandemic meant it was not the time for her to answer questions about the case.
Joanna Cherry MP, the party’s home affairs spokesman at Westminster, said “it goes without saying” that Mr Salmond must be allowed to rejoin the SNP “without delay”.
She demanded the SNP stage an independent inquiry into the handling of the allegations and said she was sure Peter Murrell, the party’s chief executive and Ms Sturgeon’s husband, would welcome this. Jackson Carlaw, the Scottish Tory leader, said:
“This remains a national political scandal with profound questions of integrity for the First Minister and her SNP government.”
The jury of eight women and five men found Mr Salmond not guilty on 12 counts of sexual assault and reached a not proven verdict on one count of intent to rape. The jury was reduced from 15 yesterday morning after two members were discharged by Lady Dorrian, the trial judge. Speaking outside court after his acquittal, Mr Salmond described the past two years as a “nightmare” and vowed that evidence “will see the light of day” which proved the case against him was a political conspiracy. He said: “But it won’t be this day, for a very good reason. For whatever nightmare I’ve been over these last two years it is nothing compared to the nightmare that everyone of us is currently living through. People are dying, many more are going to die. My strong advice to you is to go home and those who are able take care of your families, and God help us all.”
Although he did not disclose any details, Mr Salmond’s defence team claimed in a previously unreported preliminary hearing Ms Ruddick’s mobile phone contained text messages relevant to the case. At a hearing at the High Court in Edinburgh in January, Mr Jackson argued that the Scottish Government had orchestrated the criminal prosecution. He claimed that some figures were furious when he won his judicial review over the civil service-led inquiry into his behaviour, resulting in it being declared unlawful.
He said Leslie Evans, Scotland’s most senior mandarin, who was in charge of the investigation, had sent a text message to an unnamed person which read: “We may lose the battle but we will win the war.” At a later hearing in February at the High Court in Glasgow, Mr Jackson said the judicial review defeat was a “pretty serious scandal” and “people were extremely nervous” about the outcome.
Mr Jackson claimed one of Mr Salmond’s accusers had been trying to “divert” public attention away from this and she had “encouraged others to make false complaints” to the police.
He read out a text from another of Mr Salmond’s accusers about the woman, which said: “Jeez, think [she] is in trouble. S isn’t going to stop until he gets her and he’s bringing down Nicola on the way.” But Alex Prentice QC, for the prosecution, said any evidence about the judicial review defeat was “wholly collateral” to the issues due to be explored at the trial. At the end of both hearings, both Lady Dorrian and Lady Stacey agreed with Mr Prentice and ruled that the messages should not be presented to the jury.
‘This remains a political scandal with profound questions of integrity for the First Minister and her SNP government’
The jury at Alex Salmond’s trial in Edinburgh took just a few hours to find the former First Minister of Scotland not guilty on all the charges of sexual assault against him. He had denied any attempt to have non-consensual relations “with anyone in my entire life”. The allegations, he said, were “deliberate fabrications for political purposes” or “exaggerations”. His barrister, Gordon Jackson QC, said the allegations all came from the “political bubble with no real independent support of any kind”, adding: “It smells.” These imputations were never fully developed during the trial but what do they say about the nature of nationalist politics in Scotland? The factionalism that has erupted ever since the failed 2014 independence referendum forced Mr Salmond to relinquish office to Nicola Sturgeon is eating away at the nation’s governance.
As Joanna Cherry QC, an SNP MP, observed, there are questions to be asked about the processes to investigate complaints against Mr Salmond. The acquittal also represents a serious embarrassment for police and prosecuting authorities. Mr Salmond resigned from the SNP when the allegations were made and it is not clear whether he intends to resume his political career. But it seems unlikely that the febrile nature of Scottish national politics will calm down any time soon.