Monday 10 January 2011

Tavistock Square and No. 30 Bus witnesses come forth

Mr Richard Jones was a passenger on the Number 30 on the morning of July 7th 2005. His accounts of leaving this bus seconds before the explosion occurred, after it was diverted from it's usual route towards Tavistock Square, were widely disseminated via the media. Jones' claims to have seen a man delving into a bag on the lower deck of the bus helped insinuate the first notions that a 'suicide-bomber' may have been responsible for causing the 30 bus explosion.


On Wednesday 12 January, Mr Richard Jones will be called to give testimony under oath to the 7/7 Inquests. As J7 suggested in our submission to the Inquests, will Mr Jones now acknowledge that the man he saw was not Hasib Hussain and will questions be asked of the MPS about their efforts to trace the man Jones repeatedly described?

Further accounts of Richard Jones' descriptions of the man who irritated him on the Number 30 bus can be read on the J7 website here.


Update, 17 January 2011: J7 examine the testimony given by Richard Jones to the Inquests.

7 comments:

  1. This man's testimony is a joke...not that he didn't see someone fiddling with a bag, but not a bomber, so why bother with his testimony? Effectively he is just another passenger on that bus and nothing more. He wasn't even on the bus when the bomb went off!

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  2. Anonymous said 'so why bother with his testinony'?

    Because, apart from Danny Biddle whose testimony J7 examined here, Richard Jones is apparently the only other witness to be referenced in the government's official narrative.

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  3. Richard Jones has been crossexamined .

    (12 Jan , afternoon , p9)
    18 Q. Were you intending to travel to the Angel area via the
    19 Waterloo & City line?
    20 A. Yes, and at that stage it was identified that there was
    21 a power out, a power outage, that's the excuse that they
    22 gave at that time.
    10

    1 A. Yes, the Waterloo and City Line was suspended due to
    2 power outage, and I then took an alternative route to
    3 the Northern Line and was intending to go to Euston and
    4 then get the City branch back down from the
    5 Northern Line to the Angel where I was working.

    He said he reached Euston, was evacuated and took to the buses, walking back to Euston Square to get on the 30 bus one stop before it reached Euston and the crowd,

    Jones was specifically questioned about the man he saw, :

    8 Q. Now, Mr Jones, there's been some speculation about the
    9 identity of that man, man A, and whether or not he was
    10 connected to the bomber who was undoubtedly on the upper
    11 deck of the bus, the number 30 bus, as it went
    12 southbound, so I want to ask you, please, about what you
    13 can recollect of that person, in order that we can
    14 dispel any lingering concerns about whether or not he
    15 was connected.
    16 A. Okay. .....
    11 Q. I'm going to ask you a little bit more, thank you very
    12 much, about his appearance and description to see
    13 whether or not we can exclude him from any connection to
    14 the bomber, Hussain?
    15 A. Okay....
    22 A. No, there was no --
    23 Q. -- or any kind of facial growth that you could see?
    24 A. Yes.
    25 Q. My Lady, Hussain had, of course, a short beard, some

    17

    1 growth, on his chin, as evidenced by the post-mortem
    2 report.

    16 Q. But I hope we've established, Mr Jones, that there
    17 appears to be no connection with the bomber and nor that
    18 that particular gentleman was doing anything other than
    19 acting as an ordinary member of the public, a passenger
    20 on the bus?
    21 A. Correct.
    22 Q. But your statement, I'm afraid, has been open to
    23 conjecture and surmise in the way of these things in the
    24 public domain.
    25 A. Yes, I know.

    Richard Jones also gave evidence about the journey of the bus from Euston to Tavistock Square, and was within thirty yards of the bus when it blew up, so was witness to the scene immediately after the explosion

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  4. "But your statement, I'm afraid, has been open to conjecture and surmise in the way of these things in the public domain"

    His statement was taken as important by the media, the assumption that the fiddling man was the bomber was never corrected [at least nothing was ever mentioned, but of course the media are hardly likely to want to pour doubt on any sensational reporting angles...] and therefore his testimony is only valid as having been referenced in the 'narrative'.

    In truth his testimony reads "I saw a guy on a bus" which would be similar or even identical to every other potential witness statement from the bus. If the media had dug deeper at the time and gained access to more bus passengers rather than rub their hands together with glee at the report of someone 'not white' on the bus fiddling with a bag [like just about everyone does on public transport!], then this man's testimony would not have been given any more credibility than someone who was actually on the bus at the time.

    Quite how only two main witnesses have been referenced and 'quoted' by the MPS and the media when there was a busload of people has never ceased to amaze me...

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  5. There is no mention of a power outage at 8.30 which is when Jones said he arrived at Waterloo. No mention of the line being suspended until the Code Amber.

    Waterloo & City DOM incident report

    Normal service from the start of traffic. At 09:00 all services were suspended due to a number of incidents in London.

    10:00 – 16:00

    Service suspended

    16.00 - 20.00

    Service suspended

    20.00 - Close of traffic

    Service suspended

    Waterloo & City DOM report

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  6. Numeral the DOM report for this line must be wrong when it states 'normal service from the start of traffic' as we know that Bank station was closed due to a security alert:

    07.05 Bank – station closed due to security alert
    Station closed and non-stopped due to an unattended bag on station. Station re-opened
    07.27hrs. 22 minute delay.

    Can't 'non-stop' a line that has only one stop so the line must have at least been suspended then.

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