The Operation Crevice trial was the longest and most expensive criminal case in Britain – costing £50 million, lasting more than a year and illustrating graphically the growing problems in the courts system.

The case was delayed repeatedly by illness, technical problems, religious holidays and legal wrangles at huge expense to the public purse. The jury then took 27 days – a record – to deliver its verdicts.

With more than 100 terror suspects awaiting trial, there are concerns that the pattern set by Crevice will be repeated.

Almost everyone agrees that this must not happen. The trial was supposed to last six months, but began six months late and lasted for more than a year. During that year the court sat for only 35 weeks, with 7 weeks of timetabled breaks and 10 weeks lost to sickness and logistical problems. Barristers tried to have one juror discharged because he took so much time off sick. During Ramadan, the court sat for only 3½ hours each day because of concerns that the defendants would not be able to concentrate while fasting. The judge wanted to sit earlier, to make up for lost time, but one juror could not be in before 10.30am because of childcare commitments.

A report has been ordered by the Criminal Bar Association into how such an inaccurate calculation of the length of the trial was made.

Sir Ken Macdonald, the Director of Public Prosecutions, told The Times that he would order a review of the lessons to be learnt from the case. Sir Ken said: “Some of these cases involve an enormous amount of evidence; not just domestic but from Pakistan, the States, a huge amount of material. They are going to take some time. But you need to look at how much time was spent in court. We [the prosecution] need to do our part to ensure we don’t call unnecessary evidence and that we are ready when we need to be – and I think we did all of that.”

Sir Ken said that he was chairing case-management panels to ensure that trials did not become unwieldy, and added that three High Court judges had been appointed as a “gateway” for all terror trials that entered the system.

The Attorney-General is to seek extra cash – probably £5-6 million – to help to target terrorist suspects and bring them to trial. Lord Goldsmith, QC, told The Times last night: “You cannot penny-pinch when it comes to terrorism.”

The trial sent out the message that “the intelligence agencies, the police and prosecutors will not leave stones unturned in order to protect the people of this country and bring people who plot terrorist offences to justice”. With more funds, still more could be done. “It is very important that the Crown Prosecution Service is properly remunerated to deal – with police and other agencies – with these very important cases,” he said.

Last year Sue Hemming, the head of the Crown Prosecution Service counter-terrorism division, suggested that the courts were struggling to handle the volume of work that was being created by high-security trials. Since then the workload has continued to grow. Dozens of suspected terrorist plots, involving about 1,600 potential suspects, are under investigation in Britain, raising the likelihood of further charges.

Deputy Assistant Commissioner Peter Clarke, the head of Counter-Terrorism Command at Scotland Yard, entered the debate last week when he queried the operation of the courts in terror cases. He complained in a lecture that delays of two years in bringing cases to court, and the imposition of court orders that restricted reporting, were hampering public understanding of the nature of the terrorist threat in Britain.

The Criminal Bar is opposed to any changes that it would perceive as curtailing a defendant’s right to the best possible defence. Any thoughts of trials without juries, similar to the Diplock courts during the Troubles in Northern Ireland, would be resisted fiercely.

The judge, Mr Justice Anstill, praised the jurors’ thoroughness yesterday, saying that their conduct provided the perfect example of why trials of this nature should continue to be tried by jury.

The legal costs

£50m

cost of trial

18

people arrested

50

cars, homes and business premises searched

80

computers seized

105

prosecution witnesses

173

interviews taken

960

officers involved in arrests

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