Urgent Action Appeal

Please help Ashot to stay in the UK

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.

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.

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.