Bailey ‘wants to clear name’

Ian Bailey’s case is about showing, “once and for all” that he had nothing to do with the 1996 murder of Sophie Toscan du Plantier and is the victim of an ongoing conspiracy going on more than 18 years, his lawyer, Tom Creed SC, said in his closing address to the jury yesterday.

Although the DPP had said there was no intention to prosecute Mr Bailey, gardaí “are still trying to say ‘it’s him, it’s him’,” said Mr Creed. “That is why we are here, this is him saying to the world ‘will someone please say stop, what you are doing is wrong’.”

This case is about Mr Bailey’s ‘David and Goliath’ battle with “the forces of law and order”, said Mr Creed. The lives of Mr Bailey and Marie Farrell had been “stripped to the bone” and, because she had “turned on” the State, perhaps in an effort to do right by Mr Bailey, she was “squashed like a fly” and gardaí had told “bare-faced lies”.