the times | Wednesday February 23 2022 23
News
Four cleared over
shooting of activist
the case. Prosecutor Mark Heywood
QC said the case against the defendants
was based on “circumstantial evidence”
and there was no direct evidence iden-
tifying any of them.
The defendants appeared by video
link from Belmarsh high-security pris-
on for the hearing before Mr Justice
Hilliard. Formal not-guilty verdicts
were recorded because the prosecution
offered no evidence.
The case collapsed after a secret
“notification hearing” — a process that
can be used to protect undercover
agents. The only previously known
case heard the procedure could be used
to protect a Chis — covert human intel-
ligence source — an acronym that
gained prominence after its use in the
BBC crime drama Line of Duty.
Heywood said: “It is no longer poss-
ible to say the full test required by the
prosecution code remains satisfied, as
it must be if this is to proceed to trial.
“For very good reasons it is not poss-
ible to set out in full in open court the
reasons it is so.”
Outlining the circumstances on the
night Johnson was shot, he said four
males in balaclavas had approached the
house in Peckham and fired a gun at
guests, with one round striking John-
son in the head at “very close range”.
Heywood said the wider background
was a “falling out” and “hostility”
between Deriggs and Brown and the
two youngest occupants of the house
Johnson was visiting, who were aged 18.Peter Chappell, David Brown
‘W
hat the ice gets,
the ice keeps,”
said Sir Ernest
Shackleton of his ship
Endurance as he saw it
lost to the Antarctic (JackBlackburn writes).
History came eerily close
to repeating itself on
Monday when the
Endurance 22 expedition,
which is searching for
Shackleton’s lost ship,
became stuck in ice in
the Weddell Sea.
The mission ran into
trouble overnight when
the SA Agulhas II, a
South African icebreaker,
became trapped and thetemperature plummeted
to minus 10C. The
historian Dan Snow, who
is on the expedition, said
it happened on the spot
where Shackleton’s ship
was last seen in 1915.
Unlike Endurance,
which sank after months
stuck in the ice, modern
technology allowed the
Agulhas II to escape in
hours. Its crane held a
container of aviation fuelover the side and swung it
back and forth to wriggle
the ship free.
It is late summer in
Antarctica and winter is
coming, meaning the
team’s time is limited.
“In a few weeks, it all
starts freezing up,” said
Mensun Bound, the
director of exploration.
“In a few days we have
got to have our tails out
of here.”Shackleton
quest stuck in
ice that sank
Endurance
GETTY IMAGESd d ungitThe Agulhas II
frozen as fast
— and in the
same spot —
as Endurance
was in 1915Four suspects charged over the shoot-
ing of the Black Lives Matter activist
Sasha Johnson have been cleared after
the case against them collapsed.
Johnson, 28, was shot in the head at a
birthday party in May last year and
remains in hospital after suffering
“catastrophic permanent damage”.
She is a founding member of the
Taking the Initiative Party and had
been a prominent figure in the Black
Lives Matter movement last summer.
After the shooting, police said they did
not believe she was the intended target.
Four men were arrested after the
attack in Peckham, south London.
Prince Dixon, 25, of Gravesend, Kent,
Troy Reid, 20, of Southwark, Cameron
Deriggs, 19, of Lewisham, and Devonte
Brown, 19, of Southwark, all denied
conspiracy to murder. They also plead-
ed not guilty to a charge of possession
of a firearm and ammunition with
intent to endanger life.
At a hearing yesterday, the Old Bai-
ley heard that the Crown Prosecution
Service would no longer be pursuing
Sasha Johnson
remains in hospital
after the shooting