improvised explosives

The defendant was accused of planting the Tiger Tiger and Haymarket car bombs the day before breaching security at Glasgow Airport to ram his green Cherokee jeep into the front of Glasgow Airport in an attempt to detonate an improvised explosure device in the rear compartment of the vehicle. Stephen Vullo conducted all cross-examination of the Crown’s numerous explosives experts. The issue was whether the devices were capable of detonation. The defendant claimed they had been manufactured in such a way as to ensure they would not explode. The Crown’s case was that only incompetance prevented the mass murder of hundreds of civilians in both London and Glasgow. The defendant’s assertion of intentional design was rejected but the Judge reduced the sentence he would normally have passed on the basis that he had accepted on hearing cross-examination that the devices were not capable of detonating.