Confidentiality was key to freeing Birmingham Six
CHRIS Mullin insisted in the article that his sole aim in tracking down those responsible was to rescue six innocent men “who had little or no prospect of ever being released”.
He added: “I realised from the outset that merely knocking down the case against them did not prove their innocence.
“To do that I needed to persuade those who had actually made and planted the bombs to describe what they had done in sufficient detail that it would no longer be pos- sible for those in author- ity to pretend that the real culprits were behind bars.
“That involved detective work of the sort I would have recommended to the West Midlands Police had they been interested at the time.
“I interviewed 16 or 17 men who had planted bombs in and around Birmingham in the mid-1970s.
“In every case I had to provide them with an absolute assurance of confidentiality.
“If they had for a moment suspected that I was collecting information for the police, no one would have co-operated.
“What I did was overwhelmingly in the public interest.
“It led not only to the correction of one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in British legal history but also to the winding up of the notorious West Midlands Serious Crime Squad, which in turn resulted in the quashing of many other convictions.” Justice4the21 campaigners have clashed with Mr Mullin.
Julie Hambleton, whose sister was one of the 21 who died in the bombings, branded him “a disgrace” after Mr Mullin refused to name a suspected bomber at the historic pub bombings inquest in 2019.
Commenting on last week’s Old Bailey ruling, Ms Hambleton, said: “We had no expectations.
“To be perfectly honest, we didn’t know what to expect – we didn’t give it any thought.”