From: Anthony Bennett M.A. 66 Chippingfield
Tel: 01279 635789 HARLOW
e-mail: ajsbennett@btinternet.com Essex
CM17 0DJ
Carter-Ruck Monday 8 February 2010
Solicitors
6 St Andrew Street
LONDON
EC4 3AE
Your Ref: IH/DXM/13837.5
THIS LETTER IS NOT CONFIDENTIAL
Dear Sirs
For the attention of Isabel Hudson
re: Dr Gerald and Dr Kate McCann – Your Letter of 5 February 2010
I am in receipt of your letter of 5 February.
So far as the fourth paragraph of your letter is concerned, so far as I am aware on the new Madeleine Foundation website there is no promotion of the ‘60 Reasons’ book whatsoever. There we have made clear statements that it is no longer available for sale.
LIAR...YOU SOLD ONE TO MIKE GUNNILL
I have myself on a few occasions directed people to websites where ‘60 Reasons’ is available to read on the internet. I emphasise once again that I have not in any way helped or encouraged these websites to reproduce the booklet. So far as the ‘Wikileaks’ site is concerned, which is where I directed some people, my understanding is that it has been closed until further notice due to lack of funds or for some other reason. The ‘60 Reasons’ booklet is therefore no longer available to read on that site.
LIAR, LIAR....YOU WERE ACTUALLY TOLD NOT TO PROMOTE YOUR BOOK
I did not regard referring people to where they could read ‘60 Reasons’ as a breach of my undertakings in respect of the selling and distribution of physical copies, and I don’t think it is. However, in the light of your claim that merely to refer people to such a site ‘constitutes further publication of the libels in the booklet’, I will no longer do so and I will make sure that The Madeleine Foundation website does not do so either.
I was not aware either that a court could ‘deem this as having participated in the publication of the libels in the booklet’. I am further willing to endeavour to contact any website that may have reproduced ‘60 Reasons’ (in all cases without my consent I may add) and ask them to remove it from their sites forthwith.
LIAR LIAR.....I THOUGHT YOU WAS A GOOD SOLICITOR BENNETT.
You refer in the same paragraph to ‘at least one copy of the booklet’ being sold. On 13 January this year, a Mr Mike Gunnill, a freelance photojournalist who is in contact with you, attempted to buy a booklet using the false name of Michael Sangerte, and purporting to live in ‘Reading, Berkshire’. He also claimed to be willing to pay ‘a good price’ for it. He followed up this deception by insisting that he required a hard copy of it as he believed it would become ‘an important historical document’.
At this stage I suspected that his was not a genuine customer and accordingly a booklet was sold to him. Believing that it would yield me useful information, a booklet was indeed sent to him.
And, as I predicted, it has yielded useful information, namely that Mike Gunnill uses at least three aliases – Peter Trawin, Jason Peters and now Michael Sangerte – and that he posts as ‘petert’ on a forum known a ‘Just A Thought You Know’, where numerous actionable libels of me are continually posted. It is my belief that in this respect Mr Gunnill may have been acting as your agent.
LIAR LIAR...YOU STILL SOLD ONE COPY YOU IDIOT
The ‘60 Reasons’ booklet is not for sale and below I reproduce a specimen recent exchange of correspondence I have had with Nielsen BookNet and Gardners books, who have previously placed orders for ’60 Reasons’:
=====================================================
24 January Nielesn Bookdata to Anthony Bennett
BookNet Web Online Order Collection Service for publisher/distributors – email notification
The Madeleine Foundation (00215736)
66 Chippingfield
Harlow
Essex
CM17 0DJ
Dear Distributor
You have 1 order lines awaiting collection. Please click here: http://bookorders.nielsenbooknet.com/maillogin.do?1sjpvp0d849gj001 to access and acknowledge these orders.
Or log on to http://bookorders.nielsenbooknet.com/ using your Distributor Key, User ID and Password.
Please do not respond to this email. If you have any queries about this service, then please contact our Help Desk:
Our UK based Help Desk is open Monday to Friday, 08.30-17.30
t: +44 (0)1483 712260 / f: +44 (0)1483 712261
e: help.book@nielsen.com
**************
26 January Anthony Bennett to Nielesn Bookdata and Gardners Books
From: ANTHONY BENNETT [mailto:ajsbennett@btinternet.com]
Sent: 26 January 2010 07:56
To: help.book@nielsen.com; Lynda Teixeira; Martin Watson
Subject: What really happened to Madeleine McCann 978-0-9507954-7-8
Dear Sirs
We have received the following request from Gardners Books:
[details as above]
This is to inform you that our booklet is currently not in circulation.
Following action by Gerry and Kate McCann via their lawyers, an undertaking has been given by myself as the author not to sell or distribute the book and to destroy all existing copies in the possession or control of myself. Unless circumstances change, this booklet will be unavailable until further notice.
Yours faithfully
Anthony Bennett 01279 635789
**************
27 January Gardners Books to Anthony Bennett
Dear Anthony,
I have noted this thank you, and cancelled this order on our system.
I have also taken out of the ordering route until further notice.
Regards
Jim Starnes, Buying Services Supervisor, Gardners Books, 01323 525631
================================================================
So far as the fifth paragraph of your letter is concerned, we are surprised that your client’s concern about our home page have not been reported to us earlier as our website has now been live for three months. Again, we were not aware that simply reproducing your demands on our website and confirming that we acceded to those demands could be construed as a further libel. However, in the light of your comments we are instructing our webmaster to amend the relevant sections of our home page as soon as practicable to read as follows:
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
We have had to revise our activities, however, in the light of letters sent to our Secretary Tony Bennett, and to our former Chairman, by Carter-Ruck, libel lawyers for Dr Gerald and Dr Kate McCann, on 27 August 2009. These letters, from a firm who boast that they are ‘the most feared libel lawyers in the country’, required them to:
a) permanently suspend our previous website at: www.madeleinefoundation.org
b) cease publishing, selling and distributing our book: “What Really Happened to Madeleine McCann? – 60 Reasons Which Suggest she was not Abducted”
c) cease publishing and distributing our leaflet: “What Really Happened to Madeleine McCann: 10 Key Reasons Which Suggest she was not Abducted”
d) desist from repeating libellous allegations against the McCanns.
The legal advice we have received is that there is no bar on anyone raising questions about, for example, evidence that has been publicly released by the Portuguese police and judicial authorities. Anyone is entitled for example to analyse unexplained contradictions or gaps in the evidence.
Raising questions is allowed; pointing the finger is another matter and we will not do that. Where we do raise questions and the McCanns or their advisers have commented publicly on those matters, we shall endeavour to reproduce faithfully what they have to say on those questions.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Attached is a separate sheet showing the proposed new content as against what is on our site today.
So far as the sixth paragraph of your letter is concerned, again I am surprised that only now do your clients raise any objections to the article by Barbara Nottage, as once again this article has been on our website for three months.
I have considered very carefully your clients’ objections to this article and their request that we remove the entire article on the grounds that it is ‘highly defamatory’. It is a matter that The Madeleine Foundation Committee will urgently consider.
However, I need first to make three key points about the article.
Firstly, the facts in it have been meticulously checked and we note that in your letter you do not raise any issue as to the factual basis for it.
Secondly, the article is based entirely on statements made either by your clients themselves or by their friends who were on holiday with them, such as Jane Tanner and Dr Matthew Oldfield. It is your client Dr. Gerald McCann who states that he was in Apartment 5A until around 9.10pm on 3 May 2009 and Jane Tanner who says that it was at 9.15pm that she saw a swarthy-looking man in a dark jacket and light trousers walking ‘purposefully away’ from the direction of Apartment 5A, an observation moreover confirmed by Dr Russell O’Brien’s handwritten notes about the timeline of that evening which he wrote down on the cover of Madeleine’s Activity Sticker Book – which had been torn off for the express purpose of writing down this timeline (and an amended one written later the same evening).
Thirdly, the final paragraph of Barbara Nottage’s article explicitly states the following: “I conclude by saying that I am not saying the abduction of Madeleine never happened. But I confess I do find it very difficult to understand, given all that has been said about it, how it could have happened”.
For all these reasons I take the view that no court is likely to find that article libellous of your clients. In the meantime, and pending our urgent re-consideration of whether we should remove this article, please inform us if there is any factual error in that article and we shall no doubt be willing to correct any facts that we have got wrong.
So far as the remainder of the articles on our website are concerned, you allege that ‘much of the content is clearly aimed at questioning our clients’ version of events’. We would dispute this. The long article detailing the failures of the private intelligence agencies used by your clients does not for example ‘question the McCanns’ version of events’.
Dealing with the other four articles on our site:
(1) The article on Grenville Green’s visit to Lisbon
(2) The article enumerating Robert Murat’s 17 changes of story
(3) The article dealing with statements made by Clarence Mitchell, and
(4) The article reproducing The Madeleine Foundation’s submission to the Department of Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee (which is already in the public domain)
…we cannot see anything in those articles which could amount to ‘questioning the McCanns’ version of events’. If your clients wish to particularise anything within those articles, or indeed elsewhere on our website, that can fairly be described as ‘questioning the McCanns’ version of events’, we shall be willing to give the matter further consideration.
I make one other point. There are certain matters which simply cry out for comment about the disappearance of Madeleine McCann.
To take some examples:
(a) the McCanns dramatically switching their story during the first 24 hours from ‘the abductor jemmied open the shutters and climbed in through the window’ to ‘we think we must have left the patio door unlocked’
(b) Dr David Payne saying in his statement that he was in the McCanns’ apartment with Dr Kate McCann for half-an-hour while Dr Kate McCann in her statement said he was only at the door of the apartment for about 30 seconds
(c) former Detective Inspector Dave Edgar telling a recent press conference that Jane Tanner might have seen a woman rather than a man at 9.15pm on 3 May 2007, thus undermining all of the 14 different artists’ sketches we have so far seen of the alleged abductor or, as Mr Clarence Mitchell has put it, ‘persons we wish to eliminate from our enquiries’
(d) Dr Gerald McCann saying on 28 June 2007, just 8 weeks after Madeleine was reported missing, ““I have no doubt we will be able to sustain a high profile for Madeleine’s disappearance in the long-term”.
Are your clients seriously suggesting that the entire world be forbidden from making any comment on these matters?
Finally, please note that this is a personal response. Matters regarding the contents of our website will be discussed by the Committee as soon as possible and we shall revert to you shortly.
Yours faithfully
Anthony Bennett
(b) Dr David Payne saying in his statement that he was in the McCanns’ apartment with Dr Kate McCann for half-an-hour while Dr Kate McCann in her statement said he was only at the door of the apartment for about 30 seconds ARE YOU ON DRUGS MAN??? HAVE YOU READ WHAT YOU WROTE
No comments:
Post a Comment