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There IS a grain of truth at the root of this story. But, unfortunately, nearly every detail given is wrong.
Tony Rooke did not win his case.
His case was NOT about the BBC's pre-announcement of building 7's collapse.
He therefore did NOT say that the BBC had prior knowledge.
Although it's technically true that he did 'present' video footage along with other evidence to the judge", this amounted to Rooke simply offering a package of his evidence to the judge at a pre-trial review. This was taken by the judge and Tony believes that he did personally review it, but he made no such acknowledgement and none of it was permitted by the judge to be shown or examined in court!
The judge did NOT agreed that Rooke had a reasonable case.
Rooke was NOT found not guilty. He was given a conditional discharge and sentencing was suspended for six months. (This meant that he would escape sentencing if he was not brought before magistrates for any other offence during the six months following the trial.) If he had been found not guilty, there would have been no need for a discharge and no suspended sentence.
The Judge proceeded according to the rules of "strict liability" - no requirement for any guilty intention - if you did it you are guilty regardless of your state of mind. In this case the 'it' is receiving broadcast television pictures while not in possession of a valid television licence.
About the only details that your story has correct are that Rooke refused to pay a TV license fee because he alleged the BBC intentionally misrepresented facts about the 9/11 attacks and and you are technically correct that he did not get fined. He did however, have to pay the prosecutions costs - about £400, I believe, and just a little more than the minimum fine would have been.
I know all this because I know Tony Rooke and I was at the trial.
It was on 25th February this year (2013) and held at Horsham Magistrates Court, Horsham Sussex, UK. You'll be able to check out some of the details I give above by asking the court, although, because magistrates' courts are not courts of record, no transcript is made or kept of the proceedings - the only records kept are the charges laid, against whom, who presided and the decision made.
Rooke's case against the BBC was entirely based upon the failure of the BBC to report the free fall speed of collapse of the building after it was subsequently proven and acknowledged by NIST in their final report. Thereby, he claimed, that the BBC, having withheld vital evidence from the British public in it's reporting was, in effect, advancing the cause of terrorism by perpetuating an incorrect understanding of the mechanism of the collapse and, by extension, the possible identity of the perpetrators. He, therefore maintained that he had "reasonable cause" to believe that the BBC was advancing the cause of terrorism and therefore would be guilty under section 15 (3) of the Terrorism Act if he paid his TV licence fee.
"A person commits an offence if he—
(a)provides money or other property, and
(b)knows or has reasonable cause to suspect that it will or may be used for the purposes of terrorism."
The judge said he could not, in a Magistrates Court, create a new defence to "strict liability" which he claimed would have been required if he were to accept Rooke's evidence - thus rejecting, as inapplicable, the precedent of an exception to strict liability that Rooke presented.
The judge therefore did NOT agree "that Rooke had a reasonable case to protest". In fact, he said nothing at all about the case that Rooke wished to present, saying that even if he did permit Rooke's evidence to be presented in the court, it could not make any difference to the judgement that he was bound to make because of strict liability. This was his justification for not allowing the evidence.
By this means, the judge prevented the evidence from being heard in the open court.
Having heard what the judge said about the inadmissibility of his evidence, Rooke had asked for an unconditional discharge and not to be compelled to pay the licence fee, saying "I don't want to be guilty of terrorism".
I was told, and I do not understand the reason for it if it is the case, that because of the conditional discharge, Rooke was unable to appeal. If that is true, the judge also prevented the evidence from being presented to a higher court and thus entered into the record there.
Tony has interpreted the conditional discharge and lack of a (technical) fine or a sentence as a moral 'victory' (the best that could have been expected under the circumstances).
I am more skeptical. I see it as a clever sequence of manoeuvres to lock out any official consideration of the evidence. The judge's apparent leniency may have been more a case of self-interest: there were over 100 people in and outside a very small courthouse (only three courtrooms), the vast majority of whom it was clear were Rooke's supporters. The judge may have been concerned for his own safety if he had not given some apparent quarter to Rooke. There were a score or more police inside and outside of the building by the time the trial ended. There was no trouble at all. In fact some reasonably good-natured conversations were held with police, but it was clear that they had been primed to be ready for a scuffle!