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Saturday, April 05, 2008 

Boom boom!

I would have thought that this part of Peter Wright QC's opening statement in the "liquid explosives" trial would have been somewhat important. This is from the Press Association's wire story:

The prosecutor added that there was no evidence to confirm that the defendants had managed to build a "viable device".

But he said it was clear that the would-be bombers would eventually have been able to achieve their ultimate aim.


Those are the two closing sentences in the report, after 901 words. The Guardian too reported this, although slightly differently:

The prosecution said the alleged cell may have had access to 40 litres of hydrogen peroxide, which they allegedly planned to place in soft drinks bottles, and then turn into bombs once on the planes. Wright said the cell had not produced a viable bomb, but said: "The successful construction of a viable device was only a matter of time." The jury were shown a video in which scientists recreated the men's planned bomb construction. The videos showed the bombs exploding.

That was 784 words into the report.

Still, at least PA and the Grauniad bothered to report this reasonably important fact. Despite dedicating three separate articles to coverage of the trial, neither the Times nor the Telegraph deigned to mention it at all. Neither did the Independent, although the PA report is also on their website. Or the Sun. Or the BBC, from what I could tell from news bulletins and their online reports.

Doubtless, I'm sure that our press will pay the same amount of attention to the men's defence as it has to the prosecution so far.

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