Review: Dispatches from the Dark Side by Gareth Pierce

Gareth Peirce is not a person who courts publicity, in fact she better described as a person who avoids it. Her book, ‘Dispatches from the Dark Side’, is far from self promoting, other than her name is on the front and she wrote it. The book is a collection of essays written over the last two years, published as a call to action to anyone with a shred of decency and belief in the rule of law, and justice.

This is not the Dark Side of Star Wars; this is the Dark Side of the poorly named, ‘War on Terror’. Nevertheless, Gareth steps into the virtual shoes of Obi Wan Kenobi and proceeds to take on the injustices of  the Empire.

The simple truth is that the fictional Darth Vader was practically a gentleman in the treatment of subjects of the Empire, compared to the appalling way suspects of terrorism have been treated by our real world masters. It is a slim tome, preface: four chapters and a conclusion. It is more than enough to make ones blood boil, look to the heavens and demand to know what on earth has gone wrong with the world.

The first essay, “Make sure you say you were treated properly” is a powerful indictment of the deployment of the concept of national security, to not only further justify curbing criticism and shutting down debate, but also to set up courts in which secret evidence is heard in secret so that accused never knows the case against them.

What does that mean in practical terms, other than sound rather too much like a real life Franz Kafka novel? Well, for one Muslim from Essex, he found himself under a control order, criminally prosecuted for breaching it, and subsequently acquitted by a jury in open court, as he had good reason to breach the order. Subsequently a judge quashed the control order after “an intelligence agent giving evidence from behind a screen admitted that the tip-off which lead to the decision that he (Bullivant) was a risk to national security and ‘associated with links to terrorists’, had come from a friend of his mother who, after drinking heavily, had phoned Scotland Yard, which failed ever to contact the caller to ask for further explanation.”  This kind of flimsy secret evidence has no doubt condemned some people to secret rendition, indescribable torture, and quite likely death.

Indescribable as some torture may be, Gareth Peirce paints a graphic picture of situations that no one would care to face. All of them highly illegal and contrary to all known human rights conventions.  She tracks the collusion of the British Government with the US in a whole range of extrajudicial activities, as well as the extraordinary measures taken to conceal its actions. With bracing lucidity, she chronicles disturbing events, the details of which are not readily available in news media and puts them into the context of international human rights law. Comparing what is apparently acceptable now, to the medieval practises of the Star Chamber. If this were a work of fiction, any reader would assume that things as described don’t happen in real life. Sadly they do and unless we do something about it, it will continue to happen.

When you read this book, be prepared to discover compelling evidence that Adbelbaset Ali al Megrahi, the man convicted of the responsibility of the Lockerbie bombing, was in fact framed. Even Libya would appear to have had its name cleared as far as Peirce is concerned. How is it possible that expert witnesses with no credentials whatsoever are able to offer damning evidence that destroys innocent people’s lives? All is explained in startling detail.

Fitted in: The Cardiff 3 and The Lynette White Inquiry by Satish Sekar (co-editors: Andy Soutter and Michele Bailey)
294 Pages: Publication Date - 1997, ISBN 0 - 9527325 - 0 - 5. Price: £10.99

On Valentine’s Day, February 14, 1988, at about 1.45 to 1.50 a.m., a 20 year old white prostitute was brutally murdered in a run-down flat at 7 James Street, in the Butetown district of Cardiff, Wales. She was stabbed fifty times and her throat had been violently slashed. There were also injuries to her breasts and several other parts of her body. The renowned forensic pathologist, Professor Bernard Knight, conducted the autopsy. Even for Butetown “a nocturnal, upside down, topsy-turvy world where people carry knives as part of their clothing,” it was a horrific crime. Butetown (formerly known as Tiger Bay) is one of Britain’s oldest black communities, which was involved in the first Race Riot in British history in 1919. Lynette’s body was discovered only at 9.17 p.m., by a friend (also a prostitute), Learnne Vilday. In fact the flat in which the murder had been committed belonged to her, and she had given the keys, as she often did, to Lynette to “entertain” a client.

294 Pages: Publication Date - 1997, ISBN 0 - 9527325 - 0 - 5. Price: £10.99

In spite of efforts of the Criminal Justice system to prevent miscarriages of justice a number of high profile cases have occurred in Britain in recent times. Probably the best known among these is the case of the "Birmingham Six" - six men convicted of the Birmingham pub bombings in 1975. The least known case is probably that of the "Cardiff Three"

In the early hours of the 14th of February 1988, St. Valentine's Day, a Cardiff prostitute by the name of Lynette White was brutally murdered. Murders of prostitutes are notoriously difficult to investigate for obvious reasons. Several remain unsolved. There is a tendency for the community to close ranks and there is the difficulty of tracing and interviewing the clients.

As far as the South Wales Police were concerned they had a previous notorious failure on their hands. Nora Wilfred, an Asian prostitute was stabbed more than twenty times in December 1972. That inquiry was complicated by the fact that the murder occurred on the same day as a rugby international at Cardiff. It was to prove impossible to trace all those who had attended the match.

When Lynette White was killed there is no doubt the police were spurred on by the memory of their previous "failure".