A British forensic scientist testified yesterday that some of the victims of the Crawle killings were shot at close range and that he found gunpowder residue on the clothing of the deceased, when the Jamaican government’s ballistic expert, Daniel Wary, said his tests showed none.

But Robin Keely, senior forensic scientist at the Metropolitan Police in London, said that the difference in his findings and that of Wray was most likely because of the difference in the strength of the microscopes which they used.

“The low power microscope (used by Wray) is less sensitive,” Keely told the court. “But it (gunpowder residue) would show up on the electron high-power microscope such as the one I used in my examination. The electron microscope gives 500,000 times magnification to anything it picks up…So I am not surprised that nothing was detected (by Wray) using a low-power microscope.”

Senior Superintendent Reneto Adams and five members of his disbanded Crime Management Unit (CMU) are being tried for murder for the killing of four persons – including two women – in the community of Crawle, Clarendon on May 7, 2003.

At the time police said they went in search of a wanted man but were fired on from the house where he was. In a gunfight that followed the four persons were killed, the police claimed.

However, the prosecution contends that the victims were the subject of extra-judicial execution.

Scotland Yard helped in the investigation of the case and Keely is one of the number of officials from the Metropolitan Police expected to give evidence.

Yesterday Keely said that he examined the victims’clothing in London and concluded that “some of the victims were shot from relatively close range, possibly from two or three metres”.

His tests, Keely said, revealed a total of 149 particles of discharge residue on the clothes.

In his earlier testimony the Jamaican analyst, Wray, said he had found no residue

“During my examination I did not find any evidence of gunpowder residue on items of clothing of the deceased persons,” Wray said.

Under re-examination by Director of Public Prosecution Kent Pantry, Wray said he examined the clothing under the microscope which magnifies the residue by up to 10 times. He found none.

But Keely, explaining why Wray found no gunpowder residue, told the court that if the shooting was at very close range, soot would gather around the bullet holes and therefore gunpowder residue could not be seen with a low power microscope.

Earlier in his cross examination Wray testified that he examined a number of expended cartridge fragments and found that 14 of them had been fired from an M16 rifle with serial number A0045113.

He said tests on the semi automatic revolver, which the police said they found at Crawle, determined that the weapon was fired recently and could have been fired on the day of the incident. Tests also found that three 7.62 cartridge cases found on the scene were fired from the Winchester rifle, which the police reported that they also found in the house.

Earlier in the trial a policeman testified that he had witnessed that colleagues collected a gun from an east Kingston address and took it to Crawle where Adams had planted it at the death scene. The policeman who had collected the gun had stopped on the way to Crawle and fired the weapon.