A SIGNATURE on the "Moscow letter" at the centre of the Sunday Independent libel case was probably a copy of Mr Proinsias De Rossa's, a handwriting expert told the High Court yesterday.
Mr Michael Ansell, called by Mr De Rossa's side, said the signature on the letter looked like that of Mr De Rossa but there were important differences in detail.
Mr Ansell, a retired documents expert with the Metropolitan Police in London, was giving evidence in the libel action being taken by Mr De Rossa against Independent Newspapers.
The Minister for Social Welfare and leader of Democratic Left is suing the newspaper group over an article by Eamon Dunphy in the Sunday Independent on December 13th, 1992. The article referred to a letter allegedly sent `by the Workers' Party to the Communist Party in Moscow, seeking funds, in 1986.
Mr Ansell told Mr Justice Moriarty and the jury he had been engaged in the scientific examination of documents and handwriting since 1969, and had given evidence in cases in Britain, Ireland and many other countries.
He was first approached in relation to Mr De Rossa's signature in 1993. He was shown a newspaper article about a report given by another handwriting expert, Mr James Nash, relating to signatures in the name of Proinsias De Rossa and Sean Garland.
He had asked for samples of Mr De Rossa's writing from the same period as the disputed signature. He compared them with some reservation because he was dealing with a photo-copy of the signature on the letter.
On initial inspection the signatures were similar to each other, but there were some differences. "Because of the differences I felt on balance that the signature in the name of Proinsias De Rossa was probably a copy of his signature," he told Mr Paul O'Higgins SC, for Mr De Rossa.
Mr O'Higgins said Mr Nash had compared signatures of Mr De Rossa from 1990 and 1992 with a signature of 1986.
Mr Ansell said that ideally, although signatures from different years could be compared, it would be preferable to compare signatures made in 1986 with others made in 1986 in case there had been a change of style of signature over the years.
He received 244 samples of Mr De Rossa's signature covering the period 1986 to 1996. They were largely on cheques, deposit forms for banks, bank mandates and letters.
"I came to the further conclusion that the disputed signature was outside the range of variations shown by all the control (sample) signatures I had seen," added Mr Ansell. Asked to explain the term "outside the range of variation", he said it meant a character of that type did not occur in the normal signature he had seen. In September 1996 he went to Moscow and examined the original letter at the Archives of Modern Documentation. He first examined the document for evidence of tracing of either signature - Mr De Rossa's or Sean Garland's - and found none. They both appeared to have been written with the same pen.
Mr Ansell said he had to concede an overall resemblance between the signature on the letter and that of Mr De Rossa. In other words, the disputed signature did look like Mr De Rossa's, but in his view there were a number of important differences in detail.
He had samples of Mr De Rossa's signature on bank documents from 1986. He found the "P" on the letter was a different shape from that on the control documents. Also, the "P" on the letter appeared to sit on top of the "R" but that did not happen on the bank documents bearing Mr De Rossa's signature.
The letter "D" was different and the tail of the "e" appeared to go upwards in the letter, but not in the control documents. The "a" appeared to be filled-in in the letter but not in the samples.
Mr Ansell also said the letters "s" had been written as if somebody had thought about it while writing them "as one doesn't do when one writes one's own signature". The same thing happened with part of the "D".
Referring to Mr Garland's signature, Mr Ansell said the disputed signature and the control signature were very similar save that the flourish at the end was somewhat different. He found no signs of hesitation, copying or tracing. Mr Garland's was a very simply constructed signature and it would be possible to copy it without signs that one had done so.
"In the event, I was not able to tell whether or not the Sean Garland signature was genuine," said Mr Ansell.
Mr O'Higgins said Mr Nash had come to the conclusion that Mr De Rossa's signature was probably genuine. Mr Ansell said he did not mean he was certain that it could not be Mr De Rossa's signature, but he felt on balance that it was not and therefore disagreed with Mr Nash.
He ruled out the possibility that somebody had just made up the signatures. The significance of the resemblance was that somebody either had the signatures of Proinsias De Rossa and Sean Garland in front of them, or wrote them from memory. Clearly, they were familiar with the signatures.