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The Fitted-In Project
The Betrayal
Accountability
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) had an opportunity to assert its independence in practice over miscarriage of justice cases. The principles applied in several cases in different locations. It is responsible for ensuring that only prosecutions that are appropriate for trial get to that stage. It has the discretion to refuse to prosecute or it can demand that the police conduct further research and gather more evidence.
It has to be aware of lines of inquiry that could undermine the prosecution case, such as alibi, but too often it exploits the obligation to its advantage. Yusef Abdullahi had a strong alibi. The CPS knew it was even stronger and withheld that knowledge from his defence and the court. This should not be tolerated. Testing the truthfulness of an alibi is one thing, but deceiving a jury and court can never be acceptable. Either the CPS did that or failed to rein its lead QC, when it knew or should have known of the deception.
The possibility – a glaringly obvious one – that the alibi was true and that this was an inappropriate prosecution appears to have escaped it and its Crown Prosecutor.
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Independence
An Independent Eye
Last year an important anniversary passed without note. The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) 'celebrated' its 25th anniversary. It was established by the Prosecution of Offenders Act (1985) as a result of a Royal Commission into an egregious miscarriage of justice that befell three vulnerable young men in the supposedly legally different era of the 1970s. TheCPS became operational in 1986.
Ahmet Salih and Ronald Leighton were children and Colin Lattimore had the intellectual functioning of a child under 10. Police and the criminal justice system trampled their rights that were already supposed to prevent the manipulation and bullying of vulnerable young people under foot. They were prosecuted under the previous system where police decided whether suspects they had arrested should be prosecuted. Unsurprisingly, that resulted in inappropriate prosecutions being brought. The CPS was established to ensure that decisions on whether to prosecute or not were independent of the police, but in the early years the police were the exclusive source of information for the CPS.
The Police And Criminal Evidence Act (PACE) also came from that Royal Commission a quarter of a century ago, but while the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) and Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC), both of which are far younger have come in for sustained attack from campaigners, the CPS remains largely ignored. Why?
It was supposed to be the guarantor of independence over decisions on whether to prosecute or not – a crucial dispassionate buffer between police and the public, but is it independent? Has it ever been and can it ever be?
The Concrete Tests
In its early years it cited the fact that it discontinued approximately 10% of cases that came before it as proof of independence. Without knowing why those cases were halted that should not be accepted at face value. Some were stopped on grounds of cost and what about the application of its Code for Crown Prosecutors, which included its criteria for prosecuting? The were also prosecutions which it hailed as triumphs, such as over the murder of Rolan Adams (see A Terrible Missed Opportunity, which we published at http://www.fittedin.com/the-news/1-latest-news/287-a-terrible-missed-opportunity.html)
There had to be a realistic prospect of conviction and it had to be in the public interest, but it never defined what the public interest was and which cases were stopped as not being in the public interest. Its test for the prospect of conviction was the sufficiency of evidence criteria. When the Cardiff Five were prosecuted there were thirteen. Astonishingly even now many remain blissfully unaware that this is the standard by which the CPS' claims of independence – competence even – should be judged, especially when dealing with claims of miscarriages of justice.
I applied this test to the prosecutions of the Cardiff Five in their 1989-90 (see chapter 4 ofFitted In: The Cardiff 3 and the Lynette White Inquiry). It soon became clear that the CPS, which has a continuing discretion to discontinue any prosecution at any stage had failed to apply its own Code. And what of the reviews that were supposed to take place? There is no evidence that any occurred. If they did they failed to prevent an appalling prosecution.
At first the CPS defended its conduct by pointing out that it passed the test because three of the defendants were convicted. Securing a notorious miscarriage of justice should never be considered a measure of success.
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Please help Ashot to stay in the UK |
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Urgent Action Appeal
Please help Ashot to stay in the UK
39-year-old Ashot Aghababyan from Armenia is currently being held in detention and is due to be forcibly removed from the UK on Sunday 5th February Flight number BD 933 to Yerevan, 15:05 (Home Office Ref: A1435279)
Ashot was an important member of the opposition political party in Armenia and was assistant bodyguard to Albert Bazeyan, one of its leaders and the former Mayor of Yerevan, Armenia’s capital city. Due to his political involvement with the party he was arrested several times and warned about his activities.
In 2008, Ashot publicly accused the then President, Robert Kocharyan, of being behind the 1999 attack on the Armenian Parliament that killed the Prime Minister and seven other high-ranking officials. See here, here and here for descriptions of police brutality during the demonstrations, and ill treatment in custody in Armenia, by Human Rights Watch. Following this, his home was raided and he was forced to go into hiding with his wife and child. He was only able to escape from Armenia because relatives and friends paid a large bribe for him to fly out of the country.
According to Ashot, “I cannot go back to my own country, Armenia, until the government changes. This is because in 2008 I denounced the current prime minister and his allies as murderers to a crowd of about 10,000 anti-Government demonstrators in Liberty Square through a megaphone. I am the only person to have named them publicly, and to say that I could prove their guilt. As soon as I did this, my life was in danger and I fled the country.”
Ashot is a man of high principles, great integrity and selflessness. Through his courageous denunciation of a corrupt Government, he has put the interests of his country before his own and he has paid the price, having to leave his country and be separated from his wife and child, for whose safety he also fears.
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In The Name of God, Go!
“You have sat too long here for for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say and let us have done with you. In the Name of God, Go!” Leo Amery MP, quoting Oliver Cromwell's famous speech to the Rump Parliament, when demanding that appeasing Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain resign.
Scandalous
The largest ever corruption trial of police officers over a miscarriage of justice collapsed last December amid accusations that the head of the inquiry into what went wrong in the Lynette White Inquiry, Detective Chief Superintendent Chris Coutts, had personally ordered documents shredded. There were even demands for Coutts to be prosecuted.
The trial had been bogged down by disclosure demands that finally resulted in the collapse of the trial. Copies of documents relating to an unrelated complaint made by John Actie – one of the five men who wrongly originally stood trial for Lynette's murder – could not be found. It was claimed that they had been shredded. Even if this was true, which it now turns out was not, the originals not only still existed, but had been disclosed.
There was absolutely no evidence whatsoever that the missing copies had any significance whatsoever. Nevertheless, the CPS threw in the towel – an action that should bring it into utter disrepute. There was no guarantee that the documents had ever been shredded, let alone on Coutts' orders. Mr Justice Sweeney recorded not guilty verdicts after the CPS decided to offer no evidence.
A Farcical Disgrace
Last Thursday the allegedly shredded documents were found in the original box that they were sent in in South Wales' Police's property. This is a major embarrassment for the force, which had failed to find them in the first place and also for its treatment of Coutts and his team. Referring the matter to the Independent Police Complaints Commission does nothing to redress the lasting harm that has been done.
Eight former police officers have been acquitted on what is now known to be spurious grounds. Gregory Bull QC claimed that their acquittal was not on a technicality at the time and that his client Thomas Page's innocence had been firmly established. No it hadn't. There was a rush to acquit. There was no reason why the trial could not have been halted and a new one ordered. That would have given time for the allegedly shredded documents to be found – and there was a precedent. A trial last year was halted because the CPS could not get assurances from defence counsel that they had had full disclosure. The defendants in that trial were not acquitted. A retrial was ordered and disclosure obligations were carried out to the letter. That is what should have happened here.
We have to ask if this had not been a high profile miscarriage of justice with police officers on trial over it, would this process have been allowed to degenerate into last week's farce.
It is now crystal clear that justice has been cynically betrayed. A jury should have been allowed to decide upon the guilt or innocence of the former police officers Page, Graham Mouncher, Richard Powell, John Seaford, Mike Daniels, Peter Greenwood, Paul Jennings, Paul Stephen and the witnesses Ian Massey and Violet Perriam.
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Mainstream Again
Conservative hegemony over Colombia had waned at gunpoint thanks to the Santa Marta Massacre, which left up to 2000 dead in December 1928. Worn out by trying to defend this atrocity President Miguel Abadía Méndez presided over the end of twenty years of conservative rule. Liberal Party candidate Enrique Olaya Herrera won the election in 1930, but Olaya controversially included conservatives in his his administration. They were eventually pushed out by liberals. After all, they hadn't waited twenty years to share ministerial positions with defeated conservatives.
The rising star of radical liberalism Jorge Eliécer Gaitán Ayala was in an even bigger hurry and chose to leave the Liberal Party to establish his own opposition party, the National Leftist Revolutionary Union (Unión Nacional Izquierdista Revolucionaria {UNIR}). He had not opposed the conservative and libral élites since his teens only to share power with them. He left in 1933, but the Liberal Party changed when Alfonso López Pumarejo replaced Olaya as President in 1934, so Gaitán rejoined the Liberal Party the following year.
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Conspiracy Theories – A Fertile Breeding Ground |
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The Patsy?
Jorge Eliécer Gaitán Ayala, the People's Champion, was dead – struck down by an assassin. But who did it? The assassination was quickly pinned on 26 year-old Juan Roa Sierra, who was suffering from delusions, which included believing that he was the 19th century Colombian national hero Francisco de Paula Santander y Omaña or the Spanish adventurer Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada who seized control of Bogotá in the 1530s, claiming it for the Spanish Emperor Carlos V.
Roa clearly had serious mental problems, but he was also a very convenient suspect, as his delusions meant that the lone (lunatic) assassin hypothesis would seem plausible, but did he do it, and if he was involved in the assassination, did he do it alone? These questions divide Colombia even now. Even though Roa was not seen by anyone at the scene of the crime at the relevant time – he was first seen between two policemen – he still had the opportunity and he was discovered carrying a gun that the official report concluded he had been told to hold nearby while the 'real killer' made his getaaway.
He had tried to get close to Gaitán previously, seeking employment, but never got an appointment. At the very least, he had an interest in Gaitán if not an obsession with him. While forensic sciences were rudimentary then, they could have resolved some issues, especially regarding the gun Roa had. Colombian General Secretary and later conservative Minister of Education, Rafael Azula Barrera, claimed that it was incapable of being fired accurately. There is no evidence that Roa was proficient, or even competent, with firearms, while the assassin of Gaitán was clinically efficient – two shots to the head and one to the chest.
In the light of all this, was it really likely that Roa could have committed this terrible crime, especially on his own? The Colombian government's report concluded that Roa had been paid to stand nearby with a gun. In short, they believed that Roa was one in a long line of patsys, but if Roa was a patsy, who really did it? There were a large number of conspiracy theories to answer that, but few solid facts.
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The Assassination and its Aftermath |
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The Assassination
The Liberal Party's candidate for the Presidency of Colombia in 1950, Jorge Eliécer Gaitán Ayala, was popular with the poor in particular. An orator of great ability, he looked set to win the election in 1949, but was denied the chance to stand due to an assassin or more likely a conspiracy. Gaitán carried the hopes of most of the country on his shoulders, but Colombia was to be robbed of its future on April 9th 1948 and earn a succession of unwanted tags.
Gaitán had spent the previous night preparing the defence of Lieutenant Jesús María Cortés Poveda until 4.00 a.m. Cortés was subsequently acquitted – Gaitán had won his last case from beyond the grave. Despite having worked hard the night before, Gaitán arrived at his office four hours later on April 9th. A young man had been observed waiting outside Gaitán's office in downtown Bogotá. He had arrived around 9.30, waiting to see the lawyer and Presidential candidate. Gaitán left his office for the last time shortly after 1.00 p.m.
He didn't get far. An assassin had been lying in wait and shot him three times, twice in the head and once in the chest, with a .32 calilbre gun around 1.15 in the afternoon. He was carried to hospital, but it was too late; Gaitán died soon afterwards. His assassination quickly enraged the people of Bogotá and beyond. His supporters called people onto the streets to protest. For the next ten hours Bogotá was ablaze. The alleged assassin Juan Roa Sierra was rapidly subjected to mob justice, but his violent death did nothing to quell the angry mood of the crowd, or solve the issues surrounding his death.
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Conspiracy Theories – Ospina's Difficulties |
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The Cast of Incredible Suspects
There was no shortage of people who hated the Colombian lawyer and Liberal Party's Presidential candidate for the pending elections in 1950, Jorge Eliécer Gaitán Ayala. He had enemies on both left and right of the political spectrum and therefore a wide range of suspects in conspiracies to kill him. He was assassinated on April 9th 1948 and chaos followed along with a very unfortunate legacy. Violence (Bogotazo) erupted over the next ten hours and the assassination contributed to a culture of violence that sadly continues to this day.
Unsurprisingly, Gaitán's political opponents were suspected and blamed as conspiracy theories took root. After all, the conservative President Mariano Ospina Pérez was not only an implacable opponent, but his policies, especially the land-seizures, were vigorously opposed by Gaitán. Ospina and his party certainly had much to gain from Gaitán's death, as they were as unpopular as Gaitán was the opposite. He looked a shoe-in to win the Presidency in 1950, which meant not oly r4eversal of conservative policies, but radical liberalism.
Ospina, meanwhile, had previously placed the country on a collision course with his harsh and controversial land seizure policies. Gaitán was an outspoken critic of this policy. There was no love lost between the men who would have contested the next election, but for the assassination. Instead the country was engulfed in violence and the Liberal Party refused to contest the next election, resulting in a deeply unpopular government clinging to power until the army decided to act.
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