Breaking News One - The drug-smuggling fishermen vowing to clear their name
Six years ago, a group of fishermen were convicted for their role in one of the biggest drug smuggling hauls in British history.Campaigners - and one of the original jurors - say that serious doubts remain about the safety of those convictions.Last month, the men lost an official review of their case.On 29 May 2010, a small fishing boat left the Isle of Wight on what its crew claim was a routine trip to catch lobster and crab in the English Channel.At the same time, a major surveillance operation was also under way, led by the Serious Organised Crime Agency - which had intelligence about cocaine being on board a giant container ship sailing from South America.That night, one of the ships being monitored and the men's fishing boat briefly came close together - though exactly how close is still disputed.The next day 11 sacks were found tangled around a buoy in Freshwater Bay to the south of the island, each packed with a pure form of cocaine that had a street value of £53m.The prosecution's case was that the sacks were pushed off the side of the container ship for the fishermen to collect, who then took them to the bay, leaving them there to hide or be collected by another vessel at a later time.The five men - Daniel Payne, Zoran Dresic, Jonathan Beere, Scott Birtwistle and Jamie Green - were found guilty of conspiracy to smuggle class A drugs and given sentences of up to 24 years each.Richard Yardley was the only one of 12 jurors in the 2011 trial to find the men not guilty.When the verdicts were read out, he says his heart "was pounding like it was going to come out of my mouth"."I was devastated.Even more so when I heard the reaction of the families," he tells the BBC's Victoria Derbyshire programme."There are lots of things wrong about that case.Loads."I was convinced beyond reasonable doubt at the time [that they were not guilty].Now I'm convinced beyond any doubt whatsoever." The men's case has been taken up by the Centre for Criminal Appeals - a charity run by Emily Bolton, a British lawyer who worked for years on death row and innocence projects in the US.Ms Bolton says new analysis of navigational data - not seen in the original trial - suggests the container ship, the MSC Oriane, adjusted its course earlier than thought and would never have come into contact with the fishing boat, the Galwad - meaning the drugs could not have been smuggled on board."The implication of the tracks not crossing in this case is absolutely fundamental," she explains."If the tracks didn't cross, they didn't smuggle the drugs." But for the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) - the official body which investigates suspected miscarriages of justice, and decided last month not to refer the men's case back to the Court of Appeal - this isn't nearly enough."Their expert is now saying the little boat was 175m away from the big boat," says David James Smith, the CCRC commissioner who has just reviewed the case."No-one could say on that basis that the little boat wa
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