Mobuoy: Calls for public inquiry over one of Europe's largest illegal dumps
BBC Radio Foyle's North West Today programme has been to the site at Campsie to meet environmental activist, Dean Blackwood. Mr Blackwood, a director at Faughan Anglers and principal planner for the Department of Environment up until 2013, said there was a "bubbling lake of toxic waste and no proper remediation work started"."Not only were big holes allowed to be dug up for this waste to be deposited, they were allowed to be dug outside any regulations," Mr Blackwood added.The dump consists of two parcels of land - the City Industrial Waste (CIW) site and the Campsie Sand and Gravel (CSG) site.It is thought to cover more than 100 acres of land or the size of about 70 football pitches."The failure of the authorities to act in a proper manner really calls into question the effectiveness of our government departments to regulate and protect the environment," Mr Blackwood said."This environmental crime has been described as unprecedented in the UK so you would have expected an unprecedented sentence," he added.He called for a public inquiry.
The Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) MLA Mark H Durkan said the men had "profited to the tune of over £40m by illegal dumping waste right beside our city's main drinking water supply". "It's clear they were only interested in their own profits and cared not one bit about the risk this posed to public health or the surrounding environment," he added.Durkan said the impact was being felt in the area "with the A6 road project being delayed as a result with a knock on effect on the North West's economy"."We are now looking at a bill of up to £700m to clean up this site at a time when the public purse is under significant pressure," he added.
He reiterated his party's call for a full public inquiry, adding that progress and investment was needed to make the site safe.The Northern Ireland Assembly passed a motion for a public inquiry into illegal waste disposal in March 2014.But in response to a question from the Green Party in 2020, the then Agriculture and Environment Minister Edwin Poots ruled one out.
Alderman Darren Guy, from the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) said the sentencing "is far from adequate"."Like other parties, we would support calls for a full inquiry as we believe that there were more people involved in this crime than the two men now sentenced.""We believe it is much more important to call for the government and the Daera minister to now find the correct solutions and the funding to begin the massive clean-up of the contaminated Mobuoy site."
The court was told on Friday that the amount of waste illegally disposed of could potentially have generated £30m for Doherty's company, Campsie Sand & Gravel Ltd.For Farmer's firm, City Industrial Waste Ltd, the potential sum was more than £13m.Prosecution lawyers said the case against Doherty and Farmer concerned about 636,000 tonnes of waste including construction and domestic waste.The court was told that no pollution has yet been detected in the river, but that ongoing monitoring will be required, at "significant" cost to the public purse.The £700m figure for the potential repair bill is contained in 2022/23 accounts from the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (Daera) which were published in February 2024.They estimate a cost range of between £17m and £700m.Following sentencing on Friday, Agriculture Minister Andrew Muir described the Mobuoy dump scandal as a "sophisticated and deliberate environmental crime of unprecedented scale".He announced plans to launch a public consultation on a draft remediation strategy for the site.
Does the sentence meet the gravity of the crime?
In a statement to BBC Radio Foyle, NI Water said: "Water undertake sampling and analysis for drinking water quality monitoring with samples taken at the water treatment works, the Service Reservoirs and at customer taps."There have been no water quality breaches in the treated drinking water supplied from Carmoney water treatment works that have been related to the Mobuoy waste site."Financial journalist Paul Gosling told BBC News NI "it is also one of the most dire examples possible of regulatory failure by state bodies in Northern Ireland"."The outcome will be a massive financial burden for Northern Ireland that will be a blight on the capital and revenue budgets of government here for probably decades to come," he added."People will be now asking does the sentence meet the gravity of the crime. The consequences will arguably be more severe for our society than for the perpetrators of the crime."
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Western Telegraph
15 minutes ago
- Western Telegraph
Veterans protest against possible repeal of Legacy Act
MPs including Sir Iain Duncan Smith, Mark Francois and Stuart Anderson joined former soldiers as the Act was debated inside the House of Commons on Monday. They marched to Parliament Square in Westminster, brandishing regiment flags and Union flags, and were flanked by a motorbike procession. The debate comes after more than 165,000 people signed a petition calling for the Government to keep the Legacy Act, which was put in place in 2023 by the former Conservative government to halt all but the most serious allegations involving Troubles-related cases from being investigated any further. The Labour Government announced it would repeal and replace the Northern Ireland (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act 2023 following criticism over immunity for soldiers by human rights groups. Veterans and MPs alike said they feared this would open up soldiers to being prosecuted for acts and create a 'two-tier' justice system, in which IRA soldiers are given immunity but British troops are open to prosecution. James Cartlidge, the shadow defence secretary, said he feared it would dissuade people from joining the Armed Forces because they could be 'persecuted' further down the line. He said: 'We all know we need more people in our Army, our Navy, our Air Force. 'Fundamentally, this is about us as a country, recognising that we live in a time of heightened threat…When that is happening, we will be strengthening our Armed Forces. The last thing we want to do is be going after them again for what they did decades ago. What message is that going to send to all the young people whom we want to join the Army in future?' Detail from the 2nd Battalion, Parachute Regiment cap badge (Niall Carson/PA) Sir Iain, the former leader of the Conservative Party who served in Northern Ireland, told the PA news agency that veterans were angry about the potential changes to the legislation. He said: 'They feel they served their country. They did what they could do. They did their best. It was difficult, I can promise you now, I patrolled the streets. 'We see the pursuit of Northern Ireland veterans whose cases were heard previously and settled. 'They are the ones being pursued yet again in the courts under the arrangements and this is wrong. 'You don't see any of the IRA being pursued. 'Right now this is a very one-sided arrangement with the British soldiers who didn't ask to go there.' Mr Francois, a shadow junior defence minister who backed the petition, added: 'What the Government is doing is wrong. 'They're not treating veterans who were there to uphold the law in Northern Ireland the same as they are treating alleged terrorists. 'There should be no moral equivalence between the veterans and the terrorists.' Aldwin Wight, 72, a former special forces commanding officer who lives in Cornwall, said: 'These are people we've served with. 'They're very close to us, and seeing them caught up in this sort of endless doom loop of legislation is not good. 'We're in a fairly dark situation at the moment in security terms and therefore there are going to be incidents and you've got to have people who are willing to step forward and take on the hard tasks. 'And you don't want to do that as it were, with your solicitor in your pocket. 'You want to do it with a clear operational view of what you're doing.' Denise Walker, 58, a veteran in the catering corps, came down from Glasgow to protest. She said: 'This has led to our servicemen fearing that we're going to be up for prosecution again. 'At the end of the day, this Government sent us over there to do a job on their behalf. 'We followed their orders to the letter.' David Holmes, a 64-year old veteran who runs the Rolling Thunder veteran motorbike group which protested, said: 'I spent years campaigning with this. 'We worked with the previous government. We found a good solution. 'People want closure, but actually to put 70 and 80-year-old soldiers in the dock for doing their job they were asked to do by the government on what is basically trumped up charges (is wrong). 'The only evidence is they were there at the time.' Northern Ireland Secretary, Hilary Benn, said: 'The Legacy Act has been rejected in Northern Ireland and found by our domestic courts to be unlawful, not least because it would have offered immunity to terrorists. Any incoming government would have had to repeal unlawful legislation and it is simply wrong for anyone to suggest otherwise. 'This Government's commitment to our Operation Banner veterans is unshakeable. Their professionalism and sacrifice saved countless lives in Northern Ireland and across the United Kingdom, and ultimately helped bring about peace. The Legacy Act did nothing to help our veterans – it offered only false and undeliverable promises. 'I and the Defence Secretary are engaging with our veterans community and with all interested parties over future legislation, and we will ensure that there are far better protections in place.'
Daily Mail
34 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Jockey raped and killed his sister-in-law and claimed it was suicide - now Olympian he dated for a year reveals how 'kind and charming Johnny' beat and threatened to kill her and why it was 'excruciating to leave' him
An Olympian whose abusive ex-boyfriend would go on to rape and murder another woman has revealed how leaving him was 'the hardest thing' she ever did. Olympic dressage rider and horse-trainer, Abigail Lyle, from Bangor, Co Down, was 23-years-old when she got together with charismatic jockey-turned-trainer Jonathan Creswell - who would kill showjumper Katie Simpson, 21, a decade later. Now the story of Katie's murder is set to be told in an upcoming three-part Sky documentary, Death of a Showjumper, prompting Abigail to open up about the details of her relationship with killer Creswell. After meeting at an equestrian event in Belfast, Abi and Creswell, from Greysteel, Co Derry, became a couple, and were in a relationship for around nine months between 2008 and 2009. Creswell charmed everyone he met, and if anybody suspected that his wide smile and knowing strut masked a profoundly sinister side, then they said nothing. But despite his charming exterior, during their relationship, Creswell inflicted a barrage of physical and emotional abuse on Abi, now 40 - so much so, that her father put her in touch with police domestic violence officer Nuala Lappin to help her leave him. Abi initially refused to cooperate with Nuala, blaming herself for herself for Creswell's rages. Among his attacks, she has described being taken to woodland where Creswell kicked, punched and strangled her, threatening to dump her body as she fought to stay alive, aware of the devastating grief that would engulf her parents, who had lost her brother three years earlier. 'I was thinking, "Don't let him kill you because your parents have already lost a child and they can't lose another one",' she said. She added that she saw 'red flags' at first - like Creswell taking phone calls from other women, during which he'd lie about being with Abi. He also checked her phone, and criticised her after she had spent time with family and friends, saying he didn't like her personality after socialising. Then in February 2009, Creswell assaulted Abigail for the first time after they'd had an argument and she had left to go out with friends. He later messaged her, apologising for the row, asking if he could pick her up. She told the Irish Times that when she got in his car, Creswell purposefully swerved right, ensuring her phone flew out of her hands, telling her she wouldn't be needing it. Abigail added: 'Out of nowhere he grabbed the back of my head, he hit my head off the window, off the dashboard. I was like, curled up, and he just hit me over my body, over and over and over.' She said that she'd previously thought she would defend herself if attacked, but that a 'crazy instinct' took over, and knowing that she couldn't win a physical fight with him, she would do anything to try and calm him down. Creswell eventually started apologising, saying he loved her - which Abigail described as an 'unbelievable' relief, and 'like oxygen'. His apologies took away the pain instantly, she said - until the next time he would attack her. Only when Creswell threatened to dump her in a bath of bleach – which could end her riding career – did Abi pluck up the courage to leave. She explained this by saying that the only thing she wanted more than him was to ride horses, so she escaped and used a pay phone to call Nuala for help. Creswell was subsequently charged with a series of offences, among them false imprisonment, kidnapping and threats to kill, all of which he denied. But in 2010, Creswell finally pleaded guilty to common assault and ABH and was jailed for six months. According to Nuala: 'Johnny's version of events was that he was Abi's saviour, that she was mentally unstable and that she would sit in the car and punch herself in the face.' She added that Creswell tried to flirt with her and another female officer as they questioned him. Although he had faced some punishment for his crimes, when Creswell was freed, he emerged to a hero's welcome, greeted by a party attended by 30 friends, most of whom believed that Abi had made up her story to try to get compensation. Despite his abusive and violent behaviour, Abigail says she was conflicted after leaving the relationship, telling the Irish Times she questioned whether she had done the wrong thing. She told the outlet that she was 'filled with so much fear. So much self-loathing' after extricating herself from Creswell. She described feeling 'so alone', and believing all the bad things her abuser had said about her. 'I remember at that point just feeling so lost. The anxiety – constant, absolutely crippling anxiety, because you had this person, who you loved, who has stripped you away completely. And now you are alone.' A decade after the abusive relationship with Abigail, Creswell would go on to commit an even more heinous crime - raping and murdering Katie Simpson, the 21-year-old sister of his then-girlfriend - before claiming she had taken her own life and that he had tried to save her. According to Abigail, after leaving jail, Creswell 'just picked up where he left off'. He was soon in a relationship with Christina Simpson, one of six siblings from Tynan with whom he went on to have two children. However, unbeknownst to anyone, while in a relationship with Christina, Creswell was simultaneously grooming her younger sister, Katie, who was just nine when she first met him. 'He controlled and coerced Katie since she was a child,' Detective Sergeant James Brannigan, the officer instrumental in bringing Creswell to justice, told a court hearing. No one knows when his relationship with Katie became sexual, although some locals noticed that the young horsewoman seemed terrified of Creswell hearing suggestions that she might get a boyfriend. 'Don't go saying anything like that in front of Johnny,' a family friend, Chris Faloon, recalls Katie pleading with him after he suggested another showjumper might be keen on her. Nonetheless, a few weeks before she died, Katie had embarked on a relationship with a showjumper called Shane McCloskey, who is not named in the documentary but was identified by the Mail last year. The extent of her fear of Creswell was exposed in a frantic exchange of messages with McCloskey, in which she begged him to lie about the fact they had spent the previous night together if Creswell got in touch. 'He'll kill me,' she wrote. And indeed, after finding out, Creswell viciously beat and raped Katie in a violent rage, before calling the ambulance service to say he had returned from dropping off his children at his mother's house to find Katie hanging from the banister of the family home. He insisted on attempting to take her directly to Altnagelvin Hospital in his car to avoid paramedics visiting the house. At Katie's bedside, he behaved as though distraught, shaking and weeping. But not everyone believed Creswell's story, with some nurses noting the bruises on her body. DS Brannigan described the injuries on Katie's body as 'shocking', adding: 'Her hands were like boxing gloves, they were that swollen and bruised. There were marks on her legs, on her inner thigh, there was a massive bruise on her shoulder, a small cut to her lip and bruises on her arms.' It was not just Creswell who was trying to protect himself from accusations that he was responsible: it emerged that he was engaged in a number of sexual relationships with other women, including Katie, and three of those women lied to try to cover up for him. One of them, Rose de Montmorency-Wright, 22, had lived with Katie, Creswell and Christina, and had helped carry Katie's coffin at her funeral. The others were Jill Robinson and Hayley Robb, those friends of Katie's who also loved riding and were part of the her horse set. Creswell had put about a story that Katie had fallen while riding the day before the attack to try and explain away her injuries - a story supported by Jill and Hayley. DS Brannigan remained unconvinced, but by the time Katie died six days later, having never regained consciousness, Creswell had managed to create the narrative that Katie had taken her own life, and local police seemed uninterested in investigating. According to journalist Tanya Fowles, who knew Katie and was suspicious about her death, when she rang police to alert them to Creswell's previous convictions for violence, a Derry police officer accused her of being a 'curtain twitcher'. DS Brannigan, who worked in County Armagh but had been contacted by Fowles to see if he could help, recalls how he was similarly stonewalled, with Derry detectives telling him Katie had tried to take her own life twice. As he later discovered, they had mistakenly logged two suicide 'attempts' – the first when she arrived in hospital and the second when she died from her injuries. It would take six months of dogged work by Brannigan – and questions from Katie's relatives – for Derry police to finally open an investigation. Internal swabs taken during the post mortem, which previously had not been examined, came back showing Creswell's semen - providing police with enough evidence to arrest him. He tried to lie his way out of the situation, claiming he had been in a relationship with Katie since she was 17 and that they'd had sex several times the night before she'd gone to hospital. But he proved that his story couldn't be true when he drew a diagram to show police how he had found Katie, describing her as 'kissing the wood' - by which, DS Brannigan explained, Creswell meant Katie was facing the inside bannister from which she was hanging. The length of the strap she had purportedly hung herself with was not long enough for her to be in this position, detectives discovered when revisiting the scene. Brannigan described this as a 'eureka moment', adding: 'We could see Katie did not die this way.' On March 6 2021, Creswell was charged with Katie's murder – the first of what would prove to be several criminal charges in relation to her death. In the following weeks, the extent to which the three women had tried to help cover up the crime emerged. CCTV footage showed Hayley Robb following Creswell's car home from hospital before entering his home then leaving with a bag and placing it in the boot of her own vehicle. She subsequently admitted that as Katie lay dying, she and Robinson had taken Creswell's clothes to a launderette. Robb had also cleaned up traces of blood in the house. Rose de Montmorency-Wright was subsequently arrested in England and brought back to Northern Ireland for questioning. Brannigan says: 'She admitted to us "Yeah. He told me he'd beaten Katie". And I said "Why didn't you tell us?". She said she believed Katie had taken her own life and didn't believe it was relevant. I pushed her on it, but she asked to speak to a solicitor and when she came back she wouldn't say anything.' She subsequently pleaded guilty to withholding information, and received an eight-month prison sentence, suspended for two years. Jill Robinson received a 16-month suspended sentence for perverting the course of justice, and Robb two years, suspended for two years, for withholding information and perverting the course of justice. Katie's sister Christina, whom police also believed was subject to coercive control by Creswell, was not prosecuted. Loyal to the end, Jill Robinson, who visited Creswell in prison when he was on remand, confides that she felt she had 'let Johnny down' by telling the truth. It subsequently emerged he was facing a catalogue of allegations from more than a dozen other women, among them a teenage girl who had spoken to police about being abused by Creswell. Sadly, Creswell would never face justice for his actions: at 9am on April 24, 2024, one day after the prosecution had outlined their case at his trial, his body was found at his home. Speaking now about her experience with Creswell, Abigail Lyle credits Nuala Lappin with saving her life, telling the Irish Times the domestic violence police officer's advice is 'probably why I am here today'. Abigail added that Nuala was the 'only person' who understood why it was so difficult for her to leave, supporting her until she was ready. When the Olympian heard Creswell had been arrested for Katie's murder 11 years after she'd left him, she said she was not surprised, but was devastated, noting that she'd always felt he was capable of that kind of crime. Abigail also shared advice for those concerned about someone they know who is in an abusive relationship, recommending they let that person know they are there for them, and don't judge them. And for those in this kind of relationship, she encourages them to reach out for help, and know they are not alone - and that there is 'an amazing life' waiting for them on the other side.
The Guardian
5 hours ago
- The Guardian
Musk's giant Tesla factory casts shadow on lives in a quiet corner of Germany
When Elon Musk advised Germans to vote for the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) in elections last year, Manu Hoyer – who lives in the small town where the billionaire had built Tesla's European production hub – wrote to the state premier to complain. 'How can you do business with someone who supports rightwing extremism?' she asked Dietmar Woidke, the Social Democrat leader of the eastern state of Brandenburg, who had backed the setting up of the Tesla Giga factory in Grünheide. Hoyer said that in Woidke's 'disappointing, but predictable' answer, he denied the charge. 'He said he didn't know him personally. As if that excused him.' She had co-founded a Citizens' Initiative to oppose Musk's plans, announced in 2019, to build in the sparsely populated municipality in the sandy plains south-west of Berlin. The initiative's fears at the time were largely over the potential environmental impact of the plant on the region's pine forests and groundwater. However, more recently it is Musk's politics that have caused particular alarm. Not only has he offered his high-profile support to far-right European parties, but at a rally after Donald Trump's inauguration he appeared to twice make the Nazi salute. In the meantime Tesla sales have slumped, especially in Europe – where new vehicle sales fell for five consecutive months despite an overall growth in the electric car market. Heiko Baschin, another member of the citizen's initiative, said he had been watching with a certain amount of schadenfreude. 'We put our hopes in this,' the carpenter said, discussing the change in the company's fortunes on a recent forest walk in the shadows of the sprawling Grünheide factory. As sales have declined, the factory has suffered. Shifts manufacturing the Y-Model have been reduced from three to two a day. The trade union IG Metall – which recruited several hundred workers despite opposition from Tesla – has urged the company to consider putting workers on 'kurzzeit', the short-time work allowance much of the embattled car industry has introduced to enable it to retain workers during a downturn. The regional press has reported how unsold Teslas have been moved on transporters en masse to a former East German airport 60km (37 miles) away, where, hidden behind trees and parked alongside solar panels, they bake in the sun. Musk's apparent Nazi salute was in general met with shock and horror in Germany but did not play large in Grünheide, until campaign groups projected an image of it on to the facade of the Tesla factory, provocatively placing the Nazi-associated word 'heil' in front of the Tesla logo. The shock caused by the incident was palpable on the factory floor, workers told the tabloid Berliner Kurier. 'At Tesla Germany they had pretended they had nothing to do with (Musk) and were keeping quiet,' it wrote. Now they could no longer ignore their association. Workers are hard to reach, most having been forced to sign non-disclosure agreements (NDAs). But on Kununu, a job portal where employees can anonymously vent their feelings about their workplace, one Tesla worker has written: 'The brand once stood for cosmopolitanism, progress, and tolerance, but now it stands for the exact opposite. That bothers almost everyone here, and you can feel it'. Almut, a resident of Grünheide, said local politicians were keen to cite the benefits Tesla had brought to the region, but 'neglect to mention at the same time the problematic reality that we are subsidising the richest man in the world, who in no way takes any social responsibility for what happens here'. She said local people joke among themselves about what might take the place of the factory, should Tesla fail. 'A munitions factory? A prison? In some ways these would seem like favourable alternatives,' she said. The only positive contribution as she saw it that Tesla had contributed to Grünheide was a robotic lawn mower it had donated to the local football club. Two weeks before the salute, Musk had followed his endorsement of the AfD in the German federal elections with an hour-long conversation with the anti-immigrant party's co-leader, Alice Weidel. The two discussed topics including Hitler, solar power and German bureaucracy, which Musk said had required Tesla to submit forms running to 25,000 pages in order to build the Grünheide factory. Unmentioned was the fact that the AfD had vehemently opposed the Tesla factory, citing its fears over US-driven turbo capitalism and a watering down of workers' rights. 'People really need to get behind the AfD,' Musk said. For Grünheide's residents who oppose Musk, their preoccupation remains the impact of the factory on their rural community, which is characterised by its woodlands, lakes and rivers. New cycle lanes and roads have required the felling of large swathes of pine forest, threatening the already perilous supplies of drinking water in a region declared a drought zone, the driest anywhere in Germany. The 300-hectare (740 acre) large factory complex itself is due to be expanded in the near future by a further 100 hectares, under plans signed off by Grünheide's mayor despite a local referendum in which 62% expressed their opposition. Supporters point to the 11,000 jobs the factory has created, and the boost it has given to the local economy in a region of the former communist east and which was one of the lowest-performing in the country. Some young people enthuse that the trains to Berlin now run more regularly, the supermarkets are better stocked, and that their home town is now on the map as a beacon of 'green capitalism' alongside Shanghai, Nevada and Austin, locations of the other Tesla factories. They hanker for an invitation to the 'rave cave' techno dance space Musk has allegedly constructed within the factory complex. The recruitment page of the factory's website – which emphasises that diversity is at the core of its business model – shows a lengthy list of positions needing to be filled, from shift managers to maintenance technicians. Nevertheless, the mood has cooled even among those who used to enthusiastically speak out in favour of Tesla, such as a group of local teenage schoolboys who habitually flew drones over the site when the factory was under construction and proudly posted them on YouTube – until Musk asked them to stop. 'Nobody is willing to speak publicly about Tesla/Elon any more … even anonymously,' one told the Guardian via text message, without elaborating. There was no response to a request for an interview with the company or for access to the factory. Arne Christiani, the mayor of Grünheide and an unwavering Musk enthusiast, said he was confident Tesla would stay in Grünheide and would thrive. He was unmoved, he said, by what Musk said or did. 'You have to distinguish between what happens in the US and here in Grünheide,' he said. Hoyer, who lives 9km from the factory, said she had not relinquished her dream of one day being able to see a starry sky from her garden again. 'Since the factory was built the light pollution from the round-the-clock operation has put paid to that,' she said, showing before and after pictures on her mobile phone.
