NEWS RELEASE
Four Days in Paris
The GcMAF Defendants Finally Have Their Day in Court
By Scott C. Tips, NHF President
April 7, 2021
Scott Tips & David Apelbaum before the Paris Tribunal courtroom, March 25, 2021
For those of you new to this nightmare story, David Noakes and Lynda (Lyn) Thyer were investigated – and David was prosecuted – in Great Britain for having cured people of cancer with GcMAF, a glycoprotein macrophage-activating factor that is naturally produced in every healthy human. See www.GcMAF.se. Unhealthy people, particularly those with cancer or viral diseases, can be helped immensely with injections of very minute amounts of GcMAF. Lives can be saved and were saved – and without negative side effects. But the Medical Mafia wasn’t going to take that lying down.
Despite the fact that cancer patients were only helped and not hurt, in 2015, the offices of David’s company were raided, vials of GcMAF seized, treatments of patients terminated leading to many of their deaths soon thereafter, and innocent persons sentenced to prison. For having saved thousands of people’s lives, David himself served five months out of a 15-month sentence in Wandsworth Prison in London. Lyn Thyer, in turn, was never charged in England but was ratted out by the British to the French with a made-up story of evil health “swindles” in northern France. In July-August 2019, Lyn was kidnapped by the authorities and sent off to France in handcuffs. She was only just released from French prison in late January 2021 after spending 19 months there.
Notwithstanding robust scientific evidence backing the efficacy of the product (including hundreds of GcMAF research papers easily found on Google Scholar alone), the French and British governments, through their respective agencies, have asserted that GcMAF is a fraud and a swindle. Of course they would say that, controlled as they are by the $200-billion-a-year pharmaceutical industry. Ignoring the 350 scientific papers and numerous PubMed references and scientists solidly supporting the legitimacy of GcMAF, not to even mention the hugely successful track record of clinical treatments of thousands of patients, these governmental branches of the pharmaceutical industry myopically focus on the tired, old, and discredited cash cows that they themselves fraudulently and mercilessly milk: chemotherapy, radiation, and surgical procedures that do more to kill patients than cure them.
Unlike chemotherapy’s miserable “cure” rates in the single low digits, GcMAF injections are racking up success rates of 75-100%, and at only 1% of the cost of conventional treatments. GcMAF is a real threat to the disease-perpetuating industry with which governments have saddled us. And one that the pharmaceutical industry worldwide is desperately trying to eradicate before it catches on with the general public.
So it was that the long-awaited week of trial finally arrived at the Paris Tribunal in the 17tharrondissement of Paris, France. Set for March 22-26, 2021, the trial only went four days, but it concluded each day with the latest hours I have ever seen for any court anywhere in the World. What follows is my day-by-day report written as the trial progressed over that week.
Day 1 of the Noakes/Thyer Trial – Monday, March 22, 2021
I arrived at the Tribunal de Paris building this early afternoon of March 22nd for the start of the criminal trial of David Noakes, Lyn Thyer, David Halsall, Leslie Banks, and Mr. Norton (not present) for the despicable crime of having saved cancer patients’ lives using GcMAF. How dare they?
Despite my own busy schedule, I was the first one to arrive that afternoon before Courtroom 203, where the first day of the trial was to take place. Others arrived later and eventually we were allowed to enter the courtroom and take our places in the general audience section of benches. When David Noakes was led in by two guards a short while later, I saw David for the first time since 2020 and was treated to a mild shock: very casually dressed in some sort of jogger’s clothing, he had not had a haircut in a long time and his tousled helmet of hair was more gray than black. It did, however, give him a Prince Valiant look of nobility.
The three-judge panel took its place at the front of the room about 25 minutes late, and the presiding Judge Isabelle Prevost-Desprez asked the defendants, one after another, to come up and identify themselves, where they were born, and where their principal residence was. She also asked them if they preferred to remain silent or to make a statement to the court. Every one of the defendants – upon the advice of their legal counsel, I am sure – remained silent and made no statement.
With her two female judicial colleagues (Sophie Pokora and Selma Muller-Douihech) flanking her left and right, the presiding judge then proceeded to read (in French) the accusations against the defendants and after that she promptly launched into an incredibly long reading of the written case (such as it is) against the defendants, while the two prosecutors (one man, one woman) looked on from their lofty positions to one side of the three Judges. As she read the case for the record and to the 28 people in the courtroom, she would occasionally gesture for emphasis, which told me that she was supportive of these charges. Two hours after she started, she finished her reading marathon and the actual trial could begin.
The presiding judge began by questioning defendant David Halsall, who stood front and center at a slender podium with a translator at his side as he answered questions. It was difficult for me to hear and understand the judge at times as she spoke through a mask and in rapid-fire French. Basically, Mr. Halsall admitted his guilt to the charges and answered the judge’s questions as best he could. However, when the judge did not get the answers she wanted or was expecting, she would repeatedly press Mr. Halsall for the desired answer. Essentially, she was doing the prosecutors’ job for them and all the prosecutors had to do was sit back, smile, and occasionally respond with head nods to the judge when she looked their way for either support or guidance, it was hard to tell.
Mr. Halsall’s attorney, a diminutive but feisty thin, young woman, would from time to time defend Mr. Halsall’s answers with arguments to the presiding judge, but the judge was not having any of it and eventually beat the attorney into submission, where she lapsed back into silence and some fidgety hair twirling. Actually, at one time about five of the women there were involved in idly twirling their hair such that it made me wonder if I had stumbled upon some sort of French hair-twirling contest. Of course, I could never do that with my own hair, so it made it all the more remarkable to me.
During all of this, David Noakes was in the prisoner’s box of glass windows and wood, flanked by two guards. He also had the use of a translator, but this translator was not as diligent about translating for David as the other one was for Mr. Halsall.
Mr. Halsall spoke about his work for David Noakes in France and withstood the harsh questioning of the presiding judge. At one point, near the end of the questioning, he responded yet again to the judge’s insistent questioning with “I simply did what I was told. I didn’t know that I would have to face a Nuremberg Trial,” thereby provoking an unintended escape of laughter from Lyn and me.
All in all, Mr. Halsall defended the quality and safety of the GcMAF product and at 7:30 p.m., some 3-1/2 hours after she first began grilling Mr. Halsall, the presiding judge adjourned the trial for the day.
The trial was set to reconvene the following day, Tuesday, March 23rd at 1:30 p.m. with the testimony of Lynda Thyer to start.
French health-freedom heroes Daniel Hofnung & Sylvie Rulekowski on either side of Lyn Thyer
Day 2 of the Noakes/Thyer Trial – Tuesday, March 23, 2021
One of the fundamental differences in the French legal system is that the presiding judge of every three- or five-judge panel acts like a prosecutor. No pretense is ever made of impartiality or fairness. Those of us who are used to the Anglo-Saxon common-law system of trial take for granted that a judge or panel of judges will be impartial or at least pretend to be fair, while the prosecuting attorney is the nasty one who tries to make his or her case stick. But, not in France. The judge is the one who bores unmercifully into the witnesses and defendants as if he or she were the prosecuting attorney. In fact, I suspect that one of the easiest jobs in the French legal system is to be a prosecutor. You can just sit back, play video games online, keep twirling your hair, and let the judges do your job at trial for you … up to a point.
Today’s trial session lasted from 1:42 p.m. until 8:52 p.m.; it was a long day. Only two witnesses were questioned by the Prosecutor aka Presiding Judge: (1) Lynda Thyer for over four hours; and then (2) her sister Leslie Banks for about three-and-a-half hours. David Halsall put in occasional guest appearances whenever the judge felt the urge to call him up to the podium to stand beside either Lyn or Leslie Banks so the judge could play his testimony off against that of the sisters. Although the pay was lousy, Mr. Halsall seemed to enjoy the chance to stretch his legs and play the celebrity guest wondering “Why am I here again?”
You might well ask why Leslie Banks was even there at this trial. We all do. After all, she dislikes David Noakes (and vice versa), they haven’t spoken since 2013, and at that time Ms. Banks had actually started a competitive company selling GcMAF skin cream. Keep in mind that the so-called “criminal acts” upon which this French case is based concern events that allegedly happened between June 1, 2015, and February 20, 2017. My 40 years of legal practice and residual math skills tell me that there might be a little problem here for the French authorities to try to connect these two “lovebirds” as co-conspirators. Just a slight guess.
But, no, some Inspector Clouseau has cleverly noticed that there is a connection: Why, both people sell a GcMAF product! Sacré bleu! That’s it! It is as crazy as if two sets of accused bank robbers used a Renault getaway car for their separate robberies and because of that, and only that, they are all tried together.
So, with some initial trepidation that quickly dissipated, Lynda Thyer took the stand with one of the translators on to her left side. I had been seated in the front row, right behind the stand until the judge, somehow offended, admonished me and sent me back to the third row from where it was even harder for me to hear her masked and muted questions. I protested that I had only sat where the Bailiff had directed me to, but I guess that one cheap bench seat is as good as another, so I settled in on the third row to listen to the judges’ questions and Lyn’s responses.
Lyn was also questioned about everything, even how she and David had originally met in a pub in Dover and why they had met there. Lyn’s credentials and her over thirty years of experience in research medical science seemed to impress at least one or two of the three judges, while her true story of hardship rearing her daughter alone while working 12-hour days after her husband had abandoned them did not fail to elicit genuine sympathy from all of the female judges.
Lyn was also quizzed on the house she had rented in Cherbourg and why she had rented it. The Judge drilled her on the cash found in the house when the police raided it (“What! People don’t trust banks!”) and the supposed supplies for distributing GcMAF that Mr. Halsall’s testimony the day before had referred to. And, of course, Lyn was asked why she had two French bank accounts …. (“Wait! You do trust banks! You’re confusing us now.”) All of which goes to show us that the most common and ordinary things can, when placed under the microscope of legal inquiry, result in deep but baseless suspicions.
One of the court’s suspicions centered on Lyn’s medical doctor contacts, but when asked to name names, Lyn flatly refused. “I am not giving up the names of research doctors who are being prosecuted or could be prosecuted,” she said.
Several times, Lyn’s attorneys Maîtres Bouquin and, later when he arrived in court, Olivier Forray made excellent and strong interventions to the presiding judge making sure that the record accurately reflected that to which Lyn had just been testifying. I myself even caught the translator mistranslating Lyn’s “research center” into “laboratory.”
It is not easy to summarize four hours of testimony, but Lyn can be commended for standing all of those four hours on her feet and answering questions under great pressure and with accusations built into each of those questions. Lyn testified that she never took product into France, that she was the scientist and not the accountant, and that GcMAF was a safe and effective product. Lyn refused to ever use the word “cure” in connection with GcMAF, stating instead that with the right supplements and the right medical practitioners guiding you, the immune-modulator GcMAF could “effect a recovery.”
While Lyn’s testimony was generally positive and good, her sister’s was not as clear. Probably the best-dressed person in the room, Leslie Banks took the stand immediately after Lyn turned away from the witness stand and then proceeded to deflect blame from herself. “I wasn’t informed” was one of her standard responses to the judge’s questions about the regulatory murkiness of GcMAF.
Leslie Banks testified that she had once worked for David Noakes but that they had had a falling out and she resigned in 2013 because of her doubts about GcMAF’s legality. Astutely, the judge asked Ms. Banks why, then, she had started up a company selling jars of GcMAF skincare cream? Unfortunately, with the masks, my third-row seat, and Ms. Banks’ soft English voice and accent, I could not hear her response.
A number of Ms. Banks’ responses were prefaced with “I heard that …” as in one of her replies: “I never saw the [GcMAF] product Goleic. I just heard it had not been tested.” (emphasis added) Or, “No one told me anything about the Gc thing.” On the other hand, Ms. Banks defended the safety and efficacy of GcMAF, and she did so in a confident voice that left little doubt of her sincerity.
To be fair, Ms. Banks had been out of touch with David Noakes for eight or nearly eight years, and not on good terms either, if she and David are both to be believed, which they are. So, why would anyone share any information with her, a competitor, about “the Gc thing”?
Very annoying to my American legal ears and mind, the judge kept asking Ms. Banks her opinion about GcMAF as if she were some sort of scientific expert or authority on the subject. In an American court, Ms. Banks’ often hearsay and non-expert opinion on the subject would have been shut down in a New York second. But, here, in France, it seems that everyone gets to pontificate away on any subject that they can at least, seemingly, spell correctly. Ms. Banks certainly did not ask to be put on the spot about GcMAF science, nor did she ever tell the court that she was a GcMAF expert. Rather, she did her best to answer the judge’s questions accurately. Basically, the Banks testimony led nowhere useful for the prosecution.
Ms. Banks did not deserve to be there in court. (Nor do any of the defendants actually.) I could not see that she had done anything wrong that would rise to the level of a crime. Her actions are completely mismatched in this trial with those of the other defendants simply because they all had the word “GcMAF” in common and so the authorities could use it to claim a “gang conspiracy.” Neither Ms. Banks nor the other defendants deserve this criminal treatment when they hurt no one, many lives were saved, the products were genuine, and there were no patient or consumer complaints.
I also learned the identity of the mysterious and unremarkable French attorney who quietly sat through the proceedings near the prosecutors with his laptop open in front of him. It seems that he is the lawyer for the French “Order of the Pharmacists,” and they are making a claim for monetary compensation for the pharmaceutical monies they supposedly lost because of the sales made by the defendants of GcMAF. Can you believe this? I thought it was a joke at first; but, no, there are actually people who think they deserve money for having lost sales of their far inferior products. However, we have a surprise for them: There were no sales in France. So, how could they have lost any money?
The trial adjourned at 8:52 p.m. and was scheduled to start again the next day at 1:30 p.m. (or whenever the Judges take their seats), beginning with the all-important testimony of key defendant and witness David Noakes.
Paris Tribunal building, March 22, 2021
Day 3 of the Noakes/Thyer Trial – Wednesday, March 24, 2021
The third day of the trial began on March 24th at 1:38 p.m. with the testimony of the key trial witness and defendant, David Noakes, and continued until 9:21 p.m. Needless to say, it was a long day, especially for David Noakes who was questioned for 5 hours and 34 minutes out of the total 7 hours and 43 minutes of the court session that day. That was a lot of time to be on one’s feet
The presiding judge began the questioning of David Noakes by asking him to tell her about his business background. David described his early days as a software developer who created a program for accountants. That company lasted for 19 years, and while engaged in that, he also found the time to start five newspapers, one of which, the UK Column, is still in business.
There is much more to David’s background; but cutting to the chase, he radically switched careers after hearing the late Ian Crane speak about GcMAF at a speaking event held in Ghent, Belgium in 2009. Interestingly enough, Ian Crane only knew about GcMAF because of me, since previously Ian and I had been touring western England giving speeches together and I, among other topics, spoke about GcMAF to our audiences. But the chain of knowledge doesn’t even end there, as I myself had learned of GcMAF from Bill Sardi in the Fall of 2008.
What David did, however, was far more remarkable than simply publicize GcMAF. He built an entire company around the highest-quality version of GcMAF, called “Goleic.” Goleic is GcMAF combined with an olive-oil derivative that magnifies the absorption and effectiveness of GcMAF. With this product, he saved many thousands of lives. Importantly, as every testimony at this trial revealed, no one ever died from GcMAF, no one was ever harmed, and in fact there was not even one, single consumer complaint. Ever! The only complaint came from the competition – the Pharmaceutical Industry – that soon enough realized that its $200-billion-a-year business model was threatened and it better stamp out this upstart before people actually learned that there was a cure for cancer.
The presiding judge questioned David at length about the criminal case against him in the UK and his guilty plea there. This was a tough situation to explain because David had pleaded guilty in the UK case; however, he was coerced to do so by the fact that the judge was clearly going to convict David one way or another and under British law the sooner a defendant pleads guilty, then the more flexibility a judge has to grant leniency in the sentencing. With the Crown Prosecution Service asking for a 14-year prison term, David could not be faulted for pleading guilty so that the judge could reduce any sentence handed down. In fact, the court sentenced him to 15 months in prison but released him after the first five months. So, at the time, it was a smart move. However, now that guilty plea was wrongly being used to impugn him in France.
The essence of David’s testimony, though, boiled down to several important points: (1) Neither David nor Lyn were running any GcMAF operation out of their occasional Cherbourg, France weekend retreat; (2) A Dutch company named Duurzaam was the entity that hired and paid David Halsall to ship any product that was ordered; (3) There was no “laboratory” in the Cherbourg vacation house; (4) The French case against David and Lyn is just an extension of what was done to David in the United Kingdom and thus is double jeopardy; (5) There are no victims, no consumer complaints and only people who were helped, not hurt; (6) The GcMAF produced in Cambridge, UK was of the highest quality and tested as excellent; and (7) They had a license issued by the German government for their GcMAF product but the British MHRA refused to accept or even consider it.
David concluded with his observation that big pharmaceutical companies such as Merck can kill and harm thousands and yet none of their executives ever see the inside of a prison cell, while people who do genuine good, such as David, are sent to prison for helping people. “If I had been the director of a Big Pharma company,” David pointed out, “then I wouldn’t serve any time at all.”
At around 6:00p.m., the court took a short break and then resumed with the female prosecutor questioning all of the witnesses one after the other about various points she thought important for constructing her case against them. Nothing detrimental was uncovered and at last the questioning of witnesses by the defense attorneys was allowed.
Maître Forray did a good job of establishing that Lyn had never been charged with any criminal activity in the UK, while Maître Apelbaum queried, among others, David Halsall, eliciting testimony that there was only one computer at the Cherbourg house with only one account labeled “David H” and that David Noakes had no partnership whatsoever with the owner of the company Duurzaam, Peter Dawson-Ball.
The other defense attorneys questioned their own clients, with the presiding judge interjecting her own questions from time to time. Near the end, and very sadly, David Noakes ardently exclaimed to the court, “My life is over, I might as well die! If you try to save lives, you will go to prison.”
After David Noakes and the other witnesses testified, the Tribunal adjourned for the day at 9:21 p.m.
Day 4 (and Final Day) of the Noakes-Thyer Trial – Thursday, March 25, 2021
Today, March 25, 2021, was the day for Closing Arguments, with of course the Prosecution going first and playing fast and loose with the facts. The female prosecutor, who did all of the talking while the male prosecutor sat silently beside her, was articulate but flatly wrong. It was easy to dislike her when she called the defendants “charlatans” and asked that all of their property be confiscated, with jail terms for all, albeit with all of those sentences suspended but one (guess which one?). She spoke for 1-1/2 hours and I couldn’t wait for her to be finished.
Lyn Thyer’s own sister is co-defendant Leslie Banks. And Banks’ attorney (I never learned her name) got to speak next but she was hard for me to hear and understand. Slouched over the podium and reading her speech out to the judges in rapid-fire French, I was left wondering if she might have another appointment somewhere else that she was late for. What I could glean from her 34-minute speech was quite good, but her presentation style was lacking, in my opinion. I have always said that how you say something is just as important as what you say. I heard from others in the audience (native speakers), though, who said that her remarks were excellent.
David Halsall’s attorney, Lea Dordilly, should be called “Mighty Mouse” because although diminutive in size, she made an excellent 20-minute presentation on behalf of Mr. Halsall. She pointed out to the court that he had had no intent to break the law and had cooperated with the authorities, so why should he even be given an 18-month suspended sentence? Maître Dordilly of course argued more intricately than that and appeared to be effective with the judges.
Next up were the two attorneys for Lyn Thyer who presented their defense of Lyn serially. Maître Bouquin spoke first and carefully and clearly demonstrated to the court how GcMAF could be used by doctors as a last resort treatment. After she finished, Maître Olivier Forray then gave a presentation and performance of a lifetime in arguing away all of the so-called “evidence” against Lyn Thyer. If you have ever seen the actor Gregory Peck in the film “To Kill a Mockingbird,” then you know what I am getting at. He was dramatic but not overly dramatic. He was clear and yet he was subtle. He raised his voice at times and then spoke so softly the judges had to strain to hear him. All to good effect. Forray argued what we have said all along, but he said it so well: The law here is to protect the consumers and not the “Order of the Pharmacists” who were in court with their grubby hands out looking for money from lost potential sales. If, Forray continued, the law is to protect consumers who have been injured, then WHERE are the injured consumers? The file on this case is completely empty of injured consumers and yet the Prosecutor’s Report claimed that “thousands of buyers had been fooled.” Between attorneys Bouquin and Forray, they spent 1 hour and 25 minutes in closing argument. One last important thing: Forray asked the judges to let Lyn return home to England forthwith.
David Noakes’ attorney, David Apelbaum, was last to speak and he too made an amazing 1-hour presentation to the judges defending David Noakes. He also asked the court “Ou est les cadavres?”[Where are the bodies?] and effectively refuted the Prosecution’s request that the Court send David Noakes to prison for four years. Apelbaum also read quotes from the declarations of GcMAF patients that had been lodged with the Court, showing David Noakes’ generosity and passion for helping people and how they had all only benefited from their treatments.
Among other things, Maître Apelbaum made these key arguments: (1) GcMAF works and causes no harm; (2) GcMAF was never intended to cause people to quit other treatments and patients were never incited or advised to do so; (3) David Noakes and all of those who worked on GcMAF genuinely believe in its effectiveness, so there was no “swindle” as the prosecution alleged; (4) Any GcMAF advertisement did not specifically target France; (5) Any distribution of GcMAF in France was never operated, managed, or supervised by David Noakes; and (6) There is no proof of fraud or misrepresentation, as no patient has ever been investigated and therefore no evidence of breach of consent has been brought. All three judges paid close attention.
Near the end, the three judges took a break, discussed whether or not Lyn could leave France for England, and then came back into the courtroom and ordered that she could leave to return home. Lyn returned to England the following day, free of constraints, except that her attorney must appear in court on April 14th on her behalf, when the verdicts will be handed down. Most other defendants, including David Noakes, are expected to be present in Court on April 14, 2021, when the same three-judge panel will hand down its decision. Unfortunately, due to COVID-19 lockdowns and restrictions, I will not be able to be in the courtroom for the Verdict.
Soon after Day 4, I learned of a sinister rumor going around that David had already been sentenced to four years in prison. That is flatly incorrect! No one was sentenced to anything yet because the Court must deliberate first and then their decision will be delivered on April 14th. Yes, the Prosecution did ask for 4 years for David but that does not mean that they will get what they asked for! Remember, at the Crown Court in London the Crown Prosecution Service asked that David be sentenced to 14 years in prison. And did they get that? No. So, beware of this kind of false rumor.
The Judges
Despite my initial misgivings, fueled by the harsh questioning of the defendants by the presiding judge, by the end of the week, I had learned that the presiding judge was the same woman who had presided over L’Affaire Bettencourt, the politically charged investigation into political corruption in France that swirled around the billionaire heiress Liliane Bettencourt and her supposed cash payments to French politicians. Judge Prevost-Desprez courageously led the investigation despite being herself slapped with an unfair indictment that was meant to derail her investigation and case. This is a woman of principles and courage. So, there is hope.
Thanks to All
It is important to remember that behind and within every legal defense team there are unsung heroes and heroines. This case was no exception, with, among others, Eric Simon, Sylvia Gray, Heather Boone, James Harkin, Renate Sbiga, Kat Carroll, Dan Kenner, and especially Dr. Carmen Wheatley having pitched in up to the very last minute to help. At great expense in time and effort, Dr. Wheatley wrote a mammoth declaration on the science of GcMAF and the good character of both David and Lyn. Among many other things, French health-freedom heroes Daniel Hofnung and Sylvie Rulekowski spent the Sunday night before the trial translating this mammoth declaration into perfect French. Eric Simon also translated into French some key declarations that were lodged with the Court on behalf of David and Lyn.
Also, never to be forgotten are the numerous financial supporters for David and Lyn, those who donated so that the two could be properly defended. NHF Executive Director Katherine Carroll wrote a smashing fundraiser that raised much-needed funds for the NHF legal team. A very last-minute fundraising campaign organized by Lyn’s brother Trevor Banks raised the money needed to pay for Lyn’s expensive, new attorney Olivier Forray. Had it not been for the NHF donors, however, we could never have mounted a proper legal defense. They all are heroes and heroines in this story that has not quite ended.
David and Lyn have both expressed their heartfelt gratitude to all of their supporters and donors. Now, we all remain silently awaiting the April 14, 2021, Paris Tribunal’s decision on the defendants’ fate, and hope for a fair and just outcome.
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