Like many threads, this one has morphed into something completely different and DV is being unfairly maligned. It was not he who raised the issue of rumours. He simply asked whether there had been a FAI into the crash, because the Scottish Crown Office has chosen not to hold one into the July 2012 Tornado mid-air on the grounds that Service personnel are not employed when in Scotland. (You all know this, right? You have a letter from MoD saying you lose all rights when you show your passport at Gretna). When challenged, they came out with a different reason. When this was challenged, they came out with yet another excuse. That lack of consistency, obvious pressure from other parts of Government and complete lack of understanding of the role of MoD SI/BoIs, is what (in my opinion) is concerning DV and (hopefully) the Lord Advocate. Rightly so.
What the thread has served to illustrate (again) is that we can all have honestly held opinions and we can all, in part, be right and wrong. My own thoughts are; if the CVR contains nothing untoward, why redact most of the section marked “S*****e”, justifying it on “personal” grounds? As someone said, just omit it altogether. There have been many cases of MoD redacting, not to protect the deceased or their families, but living/serving senior MoD personnel. Also, many examples of MoD flatly denying the content of evidence (be it reports, tapes or whatever) only to be caught in a lie. To this day, the RAF VSOs deny the existence of 322 pages of the 1992 CHART report they withheld from the ZD576 BoI. I tell you what, those 322 pages are some forgery! The worst examples you could imagine occurred on the Sea King ASaC mid-air. MoD denied the very existence of both a formal investigation and a hearing. Despite the reports and transcript being made available by another part of MoD, they still deny it. Again, some forgery! A 2 hour hearing, with easily recognisable and very distinctive voices, is deemed not to have taken place. Bloody deranged, but that’s MoD for you. Similarly, they flatly deny any MoD staff spoke to the Coroner or his Office before the Inquest. Then the Coroner’s Officer (a retired police Superintendent), presumably fed up with the lies, released the tapes of the Inquest, in which the Coroner states, a number of times, “As agreed with MoD......” Really, you’ve got to listen to the tapes or read the book. It puts anything MoD says about any accident in a completely different light.
Best of luck this week DV. In my limited experience, and albeit from well over 40 years ago, Scottish Law Lords tend to be very pragmatic people. I’m not sure they can backdate any change in the law to order a FAI. They’d have to declare the Crown Office’s ruling unsound due to an error in interpretation of the law.