Man Cleared of All Wrongdoing Demands Right to Appeal
"I was completely exonerated," insists Chief Minister, "and I intend to fight it."
A Gibraltar man who was fully vindicated, comprehensively cleared and completely exonerated has this week demanded the legal right to challenge his exoneration in court, on the grounds that he was exonerated incorrectly.
The man, who cannot be named for legal reasons because he keeps issuing press releases with his name on them, told reporters he accepted the findings of the inquiry in full, welcomed them warmly, and would now be seeking to have fourteen of them quashed.
'The report is a total vindication,' he explained, filing a thirty-six-page document explaining why the report is wrong. 'I have never been more comprehensively cleared of anything in my life. That is precisely why I am appealing. To protect the clearing.'
Legal experts described the case as unusual, noting that judicial review is normally sought by people who lost. Asked which finding he objected to most, the man said all of them, before clarifying that he objected to none of them, as he had been exonerated.
He added that the report was, in the end, only one man's view of the evidence — unlike his own view, which is also one man's, but the right man's.
Pressed on the apparent contradiction between being vindicated and going to court to complain about the vindication, he said there was no contradiction, and that anyone who saw one was engaged in a transparent political tactic. 'You can absolutely accept the whole report and also believe the whole report is irrational, unlawful and unfair,' he said. 'That is called nuance. It is also called being right, which I was found to be, and which I am challenging.'
That is called nuance. It is also called being right, which I was found to be, and which I am challenging.
The cost of the original inquiry, £8 million, will be borne by the public. The cost of appealing its conclusions will also be borne by the public, on the constitutional principle that the public should never find out how much anything costs until it is finished.
Asked whether he might simply accept the parts of the report that cleared him and let the rest go, the man appeared not to understand the question. 'But it all cleared me,' he said. 'Every word of it. Which is why every word must go.'
At the time of going to press, the man was preparing a further legal challenge against this newspaper, this sentence, and the concept of being written about.