Manchester Arena bombing victims win £45,000 from man who said it was a hoax

A conspiracy theorist will be ordered to pay £45,000 in damages to two survivors of the Manchester Arena bombing whom he claimed were ‘crisis actors’.

Martin Hibbert and his daughter Eve were stood around five metres from Salman Abedi when he detonated his suicide vest at an Ariana Grande concert in 2017.

Martin, who shielded his daughter from most of the blast, was hit with 22 pieces of shrapnel, one of which permanently severed his spinal cord.

Eve was struck in the head with a bolt – causing injuries ‘almost like she had been shot through the head’, Martin previously told an inquest – and has been left with severe brain damage.

Richard Hall, who describes himself as a journalist, targeted the pair with outlandish accusations of taking part in an ‘elaborate hoax’ orchestrated by the government.

His actions went so far as ‘secretly filming’ Eve and her mum at their house and filming Eve outside her home, the High Court heard.

Hall published several ‘widely viewed’ videos and a book laying out his claims that the attack ‘did not happen’, also giving in-person lectures about it.

While his work was not mainly about the Hibberts, it claimed they had ‘repeatedly, publicly and egregiously lied to the public for monetary gain’, barristers for the pair told judges.

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