Speeches by Norman.

“Thank you so much for coming in virtually to give us testimony. I want to go through the super-injunction, but before we get there could you tell me a little about how you came to be doing what you were doing? You were assisting people in Afghanistan. Were you working for an NGO or on your own behalf in some way?”

“Did you have an Afghan connection? 1 Note from witness: I spoke to Mr. Pollard's parliamentary assistant. On 23/08/2023 he advised that Mr. Pollard had been on leave, but that he was discussing with him sending a letter to the Minister highlighting my concerns. I didn't get a response after that, but assumed at the tim…”

“Do you have a services or forces background?”

“Fascinating. So you get this information on 13 August, you write to Heappey on 14 August and you hear back on 21 August but before that, on 17 August, the Daily Mail has picked this up. I think that is the timetable?”

“Then Wallace gets it, and the High Court receives an application for an injunction on 30 August. You are then served two weeks later?”

“We had 14 September. It was on the 18th—you’re sure?”

“Sorry, you are absolutely right—the meeting took place on the 18th. You then have this out-of-body experience in which you are talking to them, and suddenly, you go from what I think you probably assumed was a constructive conversation about a public potential problem, to being the object of a court proceeding.”

“Can you talk a little about what that felt like and what the procedure was?”

“And that was made clear to you as part of the briefing? Person A: Yes—it was at the top of every single email.2”

“The email that you got during that meeting—you presumably said during the meeting, “Hold on a second. I’ve just received this email. What does it mean? Can you take me through it?” or something like that?”

“When you received it, was that on the same call?”

“What was your reaction to them? What did they say to you?”

“In that call?”

“That’s interesting, isn’t it?”

“And no legal advice was offered to you?”

“Right, so it was, “Best of luck. We’re giving you a super-injunction from a High Court. You may need to spend a lot of money even to understand what is going on.” That feels like the tone of it: “We’re not going to support you fully.””

“So you are then in a situation in which you have raised this issue, you have messages coming into your account, and you are under not just an injunction but a super-injunction, which stops you from being able to talk about the injunction. What effect does that have on the way you behave—apart from your family, in relat…”

“Did they also have encryption and de-encryption technologies coming out of that, do you think?”

“So we left them sensitive material and kit, which they were then using against us?”

“Okay; that is a fantastic answer. Thank you. I have a final question. So, if I have understood you correctly, essentially you had to be—not necessarily dishonest, but obfuscatory with the people you were working with. You had to disguise the fact that you had received a super-injunction; you could not talk about that w…”