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Prison Writings - letters from two Hostages

Samar Alami

Greetings, sadly, madly, but truly from my new dump.

This is just a short note to say hello and to let you all know I'm generally OK and getting on, as I must. I've only been in HMP Send a few days. although there is no such thing as a nice prison, I hope this is a better place and a positive move for me.

No movement on the legal front, still waiting on a response from the House of Lords.

It has been refreshing to see Satpal Ram, Mark Barnsley and Frank Johnson, are 'out and about'.

Great relief and inspiration/renewal of hope that "it does happen - can happen". Even though it is incomplete justice because:

A) the convictions never should have happened and not so easily

b) has taken donkeys years for them to be released

c) the system 'never apologises' or acknowledges the 'mistake' even worse the 'stitch up'.

Anyway their struggle and the struggle of their families and friends have born fruit even if it's not all 'over yet.

It's great to have some joy of 'Freedom and Justice'.

Congratulations to all those involved in the struggle and all the best for the future.

Warm wishes and regards, in friendship and Solidarity

Samar Alami,

HMP Send Ripley Road Woking Surrey GU23 7LJ
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Phil Taylor

My probation date has now passed two weeks and i'm still none the wiser as to whether they are going to release me. It appears to be the same problem as last year, accommodation. They won't let me stay with my sister because she believes in my innocence and they said she would only strengthen my denial, which is utter rubbish, considering I have maintained innocence from day one and throughout the last five years of my incarceration.

My probation officer is supporting my release, although that didn't go without controversy. She booked a double visit for Monday 8th July.

She got to the prison at 10.30am, I had been waiting from 08.30am at the visits centre, but some kind person informed my probation officer that I did not want to speak with her. she phoned internal probation asking him to persuade me to speak with her as she needed to do her report. He told her, that there was no point in him asking me to speak to her if I had already made my mind up.

At 10.55am, the visits staff came and informed me that my visitor had not turned up.

I saw the internal probation officer at 10.15 that morning whilst in the visits room and had said "good morning" but he just ignored me.

When I saw him at 2.00pm that afternoon, he told me that my probation officer had phoned him stating that I had refused to speak with her, when I said to him "didn't you hear me say good morning to you earlier, he responded that he heard someone, but thought it was god speaking to him. I thought to myself you sarcastic bastard.

Anyway I phoned my probation office that afternoon and when I found out what had gone on, I absolutely blew my top and she did as well, We have both filed complaints with the prison governor and I have instructed my solicitor to take action against the prison service.

I will pursue my complaint to where/whom ever it takes to get satisfaction.

The prison service have the bloody audacity to call me a liar, because I maintain my innocence and pull a trick like this.

This has been a deliberate attempt by prison staff to sabotage my parole, just because I am in 'denial' and maintain my innocence, I still have the same rights as a person who is guilty.

So things are once again on hold and I am not any closer to the gate.

Phil Taylor,

AP 6337 HMP Wandsworth Heathfield Road London SW18 3HS

Comment from MOJUK. Many of MOJUKs prison visits, about one in eight have been aborted, because we have been told either, 'the prisoner doesn't wish to see you' or "the person you have come to visit has been deported".

MOJUK has had many irate calls from prisoners asking why we hadn't turned up.

None of the prisoners had refused the visits and none of them had been deported, some had not been told they had a visit but the visitor changed their mind at the last minute and said they didn't want to see you.

All the complaints we have made came to nothing.

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Tommy TC Campbell, released on bail

Great news is that Tommy Campbell, has been released on bail. His lawyer made special application to the High Court, most unusual, and even more unusually won bail. The judge didn't even set special conditions like Tommy and Karen having to live apart (the usual where there are domestic violence allegations as�you know). Strong message coming from the higher court that the allegations aren't worth a shit.

Tommy is in high spirits given what he has been through. He received a large number of letters of support from all over before he was released.

We managed a spread in the News of the World up here talking about the difficulties couples like Tommy and Karen face with Karen being very open. Of course, the same day, the vicious Sunday Mail ran a piece�implying that Tommy�is serial wife beater�who is being investigated for benefits fraud. Absolute shite, of course. But they have been fed info from the police. Info they shouldn't have and for an obvious purpose of doing Tommy down.

As Tommy would say: "The beat goes on" Reg McKay, Glasgow

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Convictions Quashed for

Reg Dudley, Bob Maynard

Kathleen Bailey, and Edward Clarke

Two cleared of torso murder after 25 years By C. Walker and S. Tendler, The Times

Two men who served more than 20 years in jail for what became known as the "torso murder" had their convictions overturned by the Court of Appeal in London yesterday.

Reg Dudley, now 77, and Bob Maynard, 63, both from Islington in London, were given life sentences in 1977 for killing the underworld figures Bill Moseley and Micky Cornwall.

Yesterday Lord Justice Mantell, Mr Justice Holman and Mr Justice Gibbs declared the convictions unsafe. The two men could now be in line for compensation awards. Mr Dudley has pledged to give any award to charity.

The Old Bailey trial, which became a cause c�l�bre, ran for 135 days, making it Britain's longest criminal trial. There were no witnesses to the murders and no scientific evidence. The two were convicted on the basis of alleged confessions made to the police and in boasts made to a fellow prisoner while on remand.

The case was heard by Mr Justice Swanwick, who told the jury: "Without the evidence of the alleged oral confessions, there would not be evidence on which the Crown could ask you to convict."

The appeal court was told that the police had added quotes to the "confessions", and that the man who had reported the boasting later admitted that he had been lying.

The case dates back to 1974, when Moseley's dismembered torso was washed up in the Thames at Rainham in Essex. His head was found three years later in an Islington public lavatory, disproving the prosecution's theory that he had been shot in the head.

A year later Cornwall, a friend of Moseley known as the "laughing bank robber" because of his perpetual smile, was shot and dumped in a shallow grave in Hertfordshire.

The police concluded that a major criminal gang was at work in North London, although no hard evidence for its existence was ever found. Eighteen people were arrested: seven were charged and four convicted, two for lesser offences.

These convictions - of Mr Dudley's daughter, Kathleen Bailey, and Edward Clarke, who died in 1995 - for conspiracy to cause grievous bodily harm, were also quashed yesterday. The reasons for the decisions will be given at a later date.

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Fair trial is still a right, even in prison �������By Richard Ford, The Times, 16/06/2002

Two ex-prisoners have dealt a serious blow to prison disciplinary hearings after the European Court of Human Rights ruled yesterday that their human rights had been breached when they were punished.

Prison governors are likely to lose their powers to sit as "judge and jury" in internal hearings relating to breaches of prison discipline after the judgment by the European court. Inmates facing hearings involving incidents that would be considered criminal outside prison will now have the right to be legally represented.

The court ruled that the two men had been denied a fair trial under Article 6 of the Human Rights Act because the seriousness of the charges against them and the punishment given should have warranted representation by a lawyer. It ordered the Government to pay the �17,124 costs of both men, but rejected their claim for �4,000 compensation.

The judgment surprised lawyers, who had expected the Home Office to win the case, although when the Human Rights Act came into force the Prison Service was aware that its internal disciplinary hearings could face a challenge. A spokesman said: "We are studying the judgment and hope to be able to make further comment in due course."

In 1998 there were 126,000 adjudications by governors for alleged breaches of prison discipline. A total of 111,000 were proved and in 75,000 cases additional days were added to offenders' sentences.

In the judgment from Strasbourg yesterday, Lawrence Connors and Okechukwiw Ezeh had claimed that their human rights had been breached after both had extra days added to their sentences in disciplinary hearings. They had also been refused the right to be legally represented. Connors had been jogging around a track in the prison exercise yard when he collided with an officer. The officer alleged that in 1997 Connors had run into him deliberately and he was charged with assault contrary to Prison Rules.

The prison governor rejected Connors's application to be legally represented at the hearing, which resulted in him being punished by having seven days added to his sentence, three days confined to his cell and a fine of �8. It was Connors's 37th offence against prison discipline. Ezeh, a prisoner in Wakefield top-security jail, was in a meeting with his probation officer when he allegedly threatened to kill her if she did not write down what he said. The prison governor rejected his application to be legally represented at the hearing. He was given an extra 40 days on his sentence, with 14 days confined to his cell. It was Ezeh's 22nd offence against discipline and his seventh offence of threatening to kill staff.

The European court said yesterday that the punishments of 40 and seven additional days were the equivalent, in duration, to sentences handed down by a domestic court of about 11 and two weeks' imprisonment. The court ruled that the charges against both men, plus the potential penalties, were in effect criminal charges and covered by Article 6 of the convention, giving them the right to a hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal.

John Dickinson, solicitor for both men, said that the ruling had enormous importance for the way that prison disciplinary hearings would be dealt with in future. "Clearly when a prisoner is being adjudicated for a quasi-criminal offence and it is likely that additional days will be awarded against them, then they will be entitled to representation at the adjudication at that hearing."

Michael Shirley, a CCRC referral to the Court of Appeal, fails bail application

Inmate's bail bid rejected

Michael Shirley was jailed for killing a barmaid

A former Royal Navy sailor in prison for 16 years for a murder he says he did not commit, has failed to win his release on bail pending a fresh appeal.

But lawyers acting for Michael Shirley will go back to the Court of Appeal in London next month to renew his bail application in the light of new scientific tests on trial exhibits.

Shirley, from Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, was an 18-year-old naval rating when he was jailed for life in 1987 for the rape and murder of barmaid 24-year-old Linda Cook in Portsmouth.

He completed the recommended minimum 15 years of his life sentence last year, but was refused parole because he still protested his innocence and so "failed to address his offending".

Michael Shirley has always claimed he was innocent

Shirley's counsel, Alan Masters, told Mr Justice Roderick-Evans on Tuesday that fresh tests had been carried out on slides containing samples recovered after the murder.

The tests revealed DNA, not only from Shirley and the victim, but also from an unknown third person who, the defence will argue, was the real killer.

'Cinderella murder'

This new evidence was "devastating", said Mr Masters, and rendered the conviction unsafe.

The jury at Shirley's trial in 1988 heard that the victim's jaw and spine were broken and her larynx crushed by the heel of the killer, leaving a logo imprint from the sole of his shoe.

The police hunt for the shoes - 250 pairs of which had been sold in Portsmouth that year alone - led to the case being dubbed the Cinderella murder.

Initial appeal moves failed, but Shirley's case has now been referred back to the Court of Appeal by the Criminal Cases Review Commission.

Throughout his years in prison, Shirley has staged roof-top protests, held a seven-week hunger strike and written hundreds of letters protesting his innocence.

Leave to appeal

His case was taken up by Warwick and Leamington Labour MP James Plaskitt in 1997.

Last April, the Criminal Cases Review Commission granted Shirley leave to appeal against his case.

However by April 2002, a date had still not been set, prompting the former sailor to threaten a second hunger strike.

The case took another turn in May when it was revealed that the clothes Shirley wore on the night Ms Cook was killed, had turned up in the possession of Hampshire Police.

Until then, it was believed that the clothes had been destroyed after the trial.

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Prisons full to bursting

The beginning of May saw disturbances in three prisons: Ranby, Guys Marsh and Lindholme. All hold low security prisoners, predominantly serving short sentences. Lindholme and Ranby have some life sentence prisoners; the part of Guys Marsh which flared up is a Young Offenders Institute. All three are overcrowded.

The prison population of England and Wales stood at 70,683 on 17 May 2002. On the same day the previous year it was 66,006. The �Certified Normal Accommodation� is 63,033, 7,650 less than the actual number of men, women, boys and girls crammed into the decaying old institutions and the new ones rapidly being brought into use through private finance initiatives.

The number of men and women in gaol in Britain has been growing steadily since 1993, following a reduction during the preceding five years. This reduction had in turn followed the last great �overcrowding crisis� of the late 1980s, but came far too late for the then Tory government to avoid the massive prisoner uprising, which swept through the system in 1990.

Although the 1990 revolt, which began at Strangeways prison in Manchester, was primarily caused by the appalling attitude and brutality of prison staff, there can be no doubt that the overcrowded, insanitary conditions in which prisoners were being held for up to 23 hours a day, for weeks on end played a major role in fuelling discontent. Since Strangeways, the state has largely kept the prison population subdued through carrot-and-stick measures such as parole and the Incentives and Earned Privileges Scheme. But with more and more prisoners shoved into the system every week, many of these measures become inoperable, and ultimately irrelevant. The desire for �privileges� cannot be used to divide and rule if there are none to be had and the system can only manage containment.

Since John Major made his infamous �prison works� speech in 1993, a succession of Prime Ministers and Home Secretaries, first Conservative and now Labour, have fought for the �tough on crime� prize, vying to see who can increase sentencing by the most. All the hype about �diversion from custody�, �weekend imprisonment� and more electronic tagging cannot disguise the fact that more and more people are being sent to prison for longer and longer, with anyone convicted of two violent crimes getting an automatic life sentence, and other mandatory severe sentences for repeat offenders in the pipeline. The Penal Affairs Consortium has pointed out that

�At present, prisoners serving less than 12 months in prison comprise less than 12 % of the total prison population. The major expansion of the prison population during the 1990s has been mainly a result of many more people receiving significantly longer prison sentences, even though there has not been an overall increase in offence seriousness.

�There is a danger that penal reformers will be tempted to accept the proposition that increased resort to community sentences for less serious offending should go hand-in-hand with ensuring that the public is protected from more serious offenders through the greater use of long prison terms. Such propositions have great political value but the effect could be to drive up the prison population faster than ever before. The experience of the USA in the last 20 years should leave nobody in any doubt that it could happen here.� (Newsletter of the Penal Affairs Consortium, April 2002)

Locking up more women

Women prisoners make up just 6% of the total prison population, but the number of women imprisoned has increased sharply. Between March 2001 and March 2002 the number of women prisoners increased by 18%, from 3,500 to 4,210. On 17 May it stood at 4,328. The result has been the sudden redesignation of several men�s prisons in order for them to house women, frequently change in regime or facilities, together with a severe deterioration in the conditions for women in the existing prisons

For example, at Holloway prison, north London, women are held in dormitory accommodation; although there is in-cell sanitation, the only access to showers or baths is during �association� periods. Due to overcrowding and alleged understaffing, these association periods are entirely subject to the whim of the staff on duty on any given day, and prisoners are going for up to five days at a time without being able to wash.

Locking up more black people

On 31 March 2002 there were 15,540 prisoners in England and Wales, who were described as being from an ethnic minority. This is a staggering 23.7% of the total prison population, and rises to an even more staggering 30% if the female prison population is considered separately. In an attempt to �explain� these statistics, the Home Office suggests that �a better way of comparing the ethnic composition of the prison population with that of the general population would be to exclude those prisoners who are not resident in England and Wales from the analysis� (Prison Population Brief � March 2002). However even if this is done, and the 5,470 non-white foreign national prisoners currently incarcerated in England and Wales are miraculously removed from our consideration, 16% of all prisoners, and 17% of women prisoners, are still described as other than white, in comparison to 5% of the total population.

Almost all the foreign national prisoners will be deported at the end of their sentences, irrespective of whether they had lived in Britain prior to their arrest. On 31/03/ 2002, English and Welsh prisons held 640 prisoners, detained purely under immigration legislation. These are people who have either committed no crime at all, or who have finished their criminal sentences and are being detained pending deportation or an appeal against it. FRFI learned of one particularly appalling example of such detention. A Nigerian national, who had lived and worked in Britain for 15 years, was imprisoned for two years for fraud. Had he been British he would undoubtedly have served his sentence in an open prison, and been released on an electronic tag after 10 months. Instead he served one year in a Category C, closed but low security, prison. At the end of this time, instead of being released, he was detained in prison under the Immigration Act, pending his appeal against deportation. As there was no space to put him anywhere more �suitable� he was moved to the notorious Parkhurst, where he was held in solitary confinement in the segregation unit for two weeks before being located a place on a wing.

Locking up more children

The total number of �young prisoners� (ie those aged 15-20) increased by 4%, from 10,930 in 2001 to 11,400 in March 2002. The number of �juvenile prisoners� (aged 15-17) was 2,480. With huge media scares being initiated about �teenage thugs� and �child crime-waves�, this trend can only continue�

Locking up everyone

�as can the general increase in imprisonment. The Home Office�s projection, published in March 2002 and based on data compiled up to the first quarter of 2001, was that the prison population would reach 70,700 by September 2002, 74,400 by September 2003 and 87,000 by 2008. As the first of these figures has already been reached four months ahead of the prediction, and as the prison population rose by 700 in the first two weeks of May alone, these projections begin to look increasingly unrealistic, and imprisonment on the same scale as in the USA looks like a real prospect in Britain.

Source: Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! BCM Box 5909 London WC1N 3XX

700 prison officers under investigation for,

bribery, drug smuggling, racism, sexism, fraud and violence against prisoners

By Ian Burrell, Home Affairs Correspondent, Independent, 24 June 2002

A purge of corruption among prison officers has been ordered in England and Wales with the number of investigations into allegations including bribery, fraud, drug smugling and violence now at more than 700.

Martin Narey, director general of the Prison Service, launched the crackdown because of concern that wealthy drug dealers were exploiting officers to mastermind escapes and gain transfers. He also expressed concern about the dangers that rich prisoners were bribing or compromising staff to smuggle drugs into prisons.

Mr Narey said his clean-up would also tackle allegations that rogue staff members were carrying out assaults on inmates, subjecting prisoners to racist or sexist treatment or harassing other Prison Service employees. The jails head spoke out as he revealed that he had set up an anti-corruption unit that is conducting 720 investigations into allegations of staff misbehaviour.

The cases include seven escapes from prisons and seven more from escort, 15 of fraud, 14 of inappropriate relationships between staff and inmates, 13 unauthorised disclosures of information, four of alleged trafficking, and 35 in which keys or locks had to be changed.

Mr Narey's Professional Standards Unit is also co-ordinating investigations into 53 cases of staff harassing other staff, 80 allegations of assaults on prisoners and 56 cases of racism. Prison Service sources indicated that around 100 members of staff were currently suspended.

Mr Narey told The Independent: "The prison population has changed quite a lot. We now have many, many more extremely sophisticated, extremely rich prisoners who have the capacity to compromise and corrupt staff."

He said some inmates had accumulated "very large resources" from drug enterprises and were able to use their associates to put pressure on officers. Mr Narey has recruited former police officers with backgrounds in intelligence work to take part in the investigations, often working with Customs and Excise officers.