If this is true, how could the police get it so badly wrong?
Family of freed Barry George demand action
THE family of the man wrongly convicted for killing Jill Dando say they have no faith the Met will investigate bombshell claims it was mistaken identity.
Michelle Diskin Bates said she always thought police and the BBC knew her brother, Barry George, was not guilty.
Documents submitted to a Paris court suggest Dando may have been killed in 1999 by a Russian hitman who meant to target another BBC journalist.
Court papers claim the killer was hired by French fashion mogul Gerald Marie, accused of a string of sexual assaults, to murder journalist Lisa Brinkworth.
Brinkworth, who wrote about the alleged attack in the Daily Mail last month, had gone undercover to expose Marie’s Elite Model Management.
Lawyers reportedly argue the mix-up may have been due to the similarities of the journalists, their occupation and because they lived in the same area of London.
It was also said Jill’s fiance, Alan Farthing, was Lisa’s doctor.
Lawyers refer to a conversation witnessed by former Elite executive Omar Harfouch in which Marie ordered a member of the Russian mafia to “deal with a problem”.
The documents, from French law firm Bourdon Associes, reportedly say: “Shortly thereafter… a BBC journalist, Jill Dando, was shot dead.”
Michelle said: “If this is true, how could the police have got it so badly wrong? If this can be proved, then it is huge.
“But that’s going to leave the Dando family, who were always told by police they had the right person, to realise how badly they were let down.
“There are two families in the middle of a turmoil.
“The biggest thing for Barry would be that if this is proven, will he then get compensation he deserved for being wrongly convicted? “We never believed police believed he was guilty – we know serving officers that don’t believe he did it.
“Do I have faith they will fully and properly investigate this latest story? No I don’t, not at all. There needs to be an outside police force come in and do any investigation.”
Barry, now 62, was convicted in 2001 of murdering Crimewatch host Jill, 37, on her doorstep.
He was unanimously acquitted at retrial in 2008 when it was found a tiny particle of gunpowder residue in a jacket pocket – instrumental in his conviction – was so small it was inadmissible.
In 2013, he was denied compensation for his wrongful conviction.
In 1999, France’s statute of legal limitations stated sexual assault had to be reported within three years,.
Marie claims the links with the Dando case have been “made up so as to try and get the statute of limitations removed”.
One of his legal team said: “It’s fanciful nonsense aimed at suggesting Lisa Brinkworth was in fear of her life and so was too scared to report the alleged attack within a reasonable time limit.
“Lisa Brinkworth made no effort to report any kind of sexual abuse at the time and only started to take action decades later.” Brinkworth claims she was kept in a safe house following the broadcasting of her exposé on the BBC’s MacIntyre Investigates programme after she posed undercover as a model.
Brinkworth also claims that the BBC did not want her taking legal action.
Businessman Omar Harfouch was with senior Elite management at a Paris restaurant in 1999, when they discussed the MacIntyre programme.
Marie is said to have told them Brinkworth was a “huge problem”, to which Vitali Leiba, an Elite agent based in Moscow and allegedly with strong links to the Russian Mafia replied: “Consider it done.”
The Harfouch testimony is now being used by lawyers for 15 plaintiffs – including Brinkworth – to try to get the French statute of limitations thrown out.