http://stage.fairtrials.net/index.php en allan.williams@fairtrials.net Copyright 2012 2012-01-27T16:36:32+00:00 http://www.fairtrials.net/cases/article/benny_wenda http://www.fairtrials.net/cases/article/benny_wenda#When:07:30:21Z Benny Wenda is a West Papuan tribal leader who leads an international campaign for the independence of West Papua from Indonesia. Due to his activities he was persecuted by the Indonesian government, subjected to torture and a politically-motivated prosecution. He escaped to the UK and was given asylum in 2002. Benny is now a British citizen and lives with his wife and six children in Oxford. In 2011, Benny discovered that Interpol had listed a “red notice” against him following a request from the Indonesian police. This red notice authorizes Benny’s provisional arrest with a view to extradition to face prosecution on the same politically-motivated charges that caused him to flee from West Papua. If Benny leaves the UK he could therefore be arrested and extradited to Indonesia. Despite being the leader in exile of his people, Benny is now unable to travel to meet with international campaign supporters or with other West Papuan exiles. Indonesia has used the red notice to continue its persecution from afar. Benny’s case demonstrates how Interpol (an international organisation of national police forces) is being abused by oppressive and undemocratic regimes to pursue political opponents. FTI is calling for the red notice against Benny to be removed and for broader reform of Interpol to make this powerful international body accountable and prevent its abuse. 2011-11-25T07:30:21+00:00 http://www.fairtrials.net/cases/article/tracey-molamphy http://www.fairtrials.net/cases/article/tracey-molamphy#When:09:28:23Z Summary Tracey Molamphy, a 40 year old British secretary, was arrested on a European Arrest Warrant in 2008 at Munich airport while catching a connecting flight in Germany after a holiday in Greece. At first she had no idea why she had been arrested but was eventually told that Portugal had demanded her extradition in relation to an arrest there in 1996, 12 years earlier. This had been an incident, relating to her former partner’s use of counterfeit money equivalent to less than £150 while they were on a holiday. Tracey had thought this had been a simple misunderstanding that had been cleared up. Upon her arrest in Germany, however, Tracey was detained for two weeks and told she would be extradited to Portugal to face charges carrying a 5 year prison sentence. With the help of three separate teams of lawyers, she was eventually able to challenge the charges in Portugal and was not extradited, but not before weeks in a foreign prison and months of uncertainty, stress and mounting costs. 2011-11-07T09:28:23+00:00 http://www.fairtrials.net/cases/article/da_an_chen http://www.fairtrials.net/cases/article/da_an_chen#When:16:34:36Z   In 2005, Mr Chen was arrested in the UK on the request of Romania where he had been tried in his absence in 1995 and given a 20 year prison sentence for allegedly committing attempted murder. Mr Chen insists that he knows nothing about the alleged and was in fact in Hungary on the date in question. Mr Chen had no knowledge that his trial was taking place and was unable to present any evidence. In fact his court-appointed defence counsel (who had never spoken to Mr Chen), agreed with the prosecutor’s submissions and requested Mr Chen’s conviction. Despite the fact that Mr Chen had been convicted in his absence, and even though Romanian law did not guarantee him a retrial, in 2006 the UK courts ordered his extradition to serve the 20 year sentence. They did this based on the assumption that Romania would in practice allow him a retrial because this is what it is to do required under international laws Romania had signed up to. They also relied on reports by Romanian legal experts and assurances given by the Romanian Government to the UK Home Office. Following his extradition, Mr Chen applied for a retrial. An initial hearing occurred to determine if a full retrial should be granted. At this hearing Mr Chen’s sentence was upheld and no retrial was ordered. This refusal to grant a retrial has been appealed and upheld in Romania all the way to the Supreme Court. Mr Chen no longer has any avenues open to challenge the refusal to give him a retrial. The assurances given by Romania were not lived up to and the assumptions made by the British court that extradited Mr Chen have now been shown to have been unfounded. Fair Trials International is now supporting Mr Chen’s Romanian lawyer’s application to the European Court of Human Rights. We are also working to raise the profile of the injustice that Mr Chen has suffered to demonstrate that the courts cannot place blind faith in assurances given by other countries about the treatment people will be given following their extradition. 2011-10-31T16:34:36+00:00 http://www.fairtrials.net/cases/article/william_burton http://www.fairtrials.net/cases/article/william_burton#When:16:58:05Z   Update: Fair Trials International is delighted to announce that William Burton was pardoned by the Philippines on December 26, 2011.   William “Billy” Burton, a 49 year old British national with serious health problems, had spent 18 years in a maximum security prison in Manila after he was arrested while in possession of 12 pounds of cannabis. He was initially given a 30 year sentence in 1992 with the possibility of parole after 8 years.   However, due to changes in the drug laws of the Philippines, his sentence was increased to 40 years. A further change in the law retroactively applied to Billy also means that he was been deprived of the possibility of parole. His release date was 2032, by which time Billy will be seventy years old.   Billy suffers from a number of birth defects as a result of his mother having taken the drug Thalidomide during her pregnancy. His incarceration in a maximum security prison with overcrowding and poor conditions had caused his health to deteriorate more rapidly than it would have had otherwise. He is in serious need of medical care only available outside of prison.   A clemency petition for Billy had won initial approval from the Parole and Pardons Board in the Philippines, President Beningo S. Aquino granted the pardon on Boxing Day 2011. 2011-09-27T16:58:05+00:00 http://www.fairtrials.net/cases/article/viswalingam_gopithas http://www.fairtrials.net/cases/article/viswalingam_gopithas#When:13:17:54Z Fair Trials International challenges Indefinite Detention under Sri Lankan Terrorism Laws at the United Nations Mr Viswalingam Gopithas, a British father of two from London, was arrested in 2007 on suspicion of seeking to provide support to the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka. He has been detained for years since then without trial. Mr Gopithas is being held under the notorious “Prevention of Terrorism Act” (PTA), one of a range of controversial security measures that have resulted in sustained criticism for Sri Lanka from the international community for human rights violations. Fair Trials International has filed an application before the United Nations Human Rights Committee challenging his indefinite detention under the PTA which allows indefinite detention without trial. Mr Gopithas is the only British national known to be held under this extraordinary law. We have also called on the British government to raise its concern about Mr Gopithas’ treatment in violation of international human rights standards.   2011-05-31T13:17:54+00:00 http://www.fairtrials.net/cases/article/francisco_juan_larranaga_paco http://www.fairtrials.net/cases/article/francisco_juan_larranaga_paco#When:17:14:54Z United Nations condemn conviction In 1999 Paco, a dual national of Spain and the Phillipines, was convicted of the kidnap, rape and murder of two young women in Cebu City despite fourteen witnesses testifying that he was on a different island, 500km away, when the crimes were committed. Paco was sentenced to death in 2004, later commuted to life imprisonment. Fair Trials International has been working on Paco’s case since 2004, helping to take the case to the United Nations Human Rights Committee (UNHRC). In 2006 the UNHRC concluded that Paco’s trial had violated the most fundamental fair trial standards including the right to be presumed innocent, the right to effective defence counsel, equality of arms and the right to have your case heard before an independent court. The UNHRC’s findings were ignored and Paco remained in prison. In October 2009, he was transferred from the Philippines to Spain under a prison transfer agreement.  "Since Paco is now in Spain, he is their responsibility. The UNHRC recommended that Paco’s death sentence be commuted and he be given early parole. Although his death sentence was commuted, he still remains in prison. Spain must do something.” Faisal Saifee, Paco’s UK lawyer  Give Up Tomorrow, a feature documentary, traces Paco’s story. Please see the trailer below. It premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in April 2011 and won the Heineken Audience Award. The documentary, six years in the making, was directed by Michael Collins and produced by Marty Syjuco. The documentary features the work of Fair Trials International.     2011-05-03T17:14:54+00:00 http://www.fairtrials.net/cases/article/deborah_dark http://www.fairtrials.net/cases/article/deborah_dark#When:04:13:39Z British grandmother pursued by the French authorities to serve a prison sentence for a twenty year old conviction she knew nothing about Deborah Dark was arrested and detained, first at gunpoint in Turkey, then in Spain and then in the UK to serve a prison sentence for a twenty-year old conviction. In 1989, Deborah was found not guilty of drug related offences in a French Court. Unbeknownst to Deborah and following her return to the UK, the prosecutor appealed the verdict in her absence and she was found guilty by an Appeal Court. She was never summoned to appear to court, nor was she informed of the conviction. Although courts in both the UK and Spain ruled that it would be unjust to extradite her, Deborah remained subject to the European Arrest Warrant in virtually all other EU member states. Deborah was in effect trapped within the UK and unable to visit her family in Spain for over 3 years. It was only in May 2010, after Fair Trials International helped build public and political support for Deborah’s case that France finally agreed to remove the Arrest Warrant.   2011-03-15T04:13:39+00:00 http://www.fairtrials.net/cases/article/michael-binnington-luke-atkinson http://www.fairtrials.net/cases/article/michael-binnington-luke-atkinson#When:16:36:32Z Michael and Luke, two young cousins from Essex, faced 15 years in a Cypriot jail for manslaughter and GBH after being backseat passengers in a car that collided with a moped in August 2006, killing the driver and seriously wounding the passenger. The driver, their uncle, pleaded guilty having been told that, if he did so, Michael and Luke would not be prosecuted as passengers. Despite this, both were charged and tried. Thankfully, both were, however, acquitted. Their ordeal was not, however, over. An appeal was launched by Cypriot prosecutors despite a lack of new evidence or additional testimony. The Supreme Court in Cyprus upheld the appeal, arguing that the trial had not given sufficient weight to the evidence presented to it. Michael and Luke were both absent when the appeal was heard but were convicted to three years in prison and European Arrest Warrants were issued for their arrest and extradition back to Cyprus. In spite of efforts supported by Fair Trials International to allow them to serve the sentence in the UK, they were extradited back to Cyprus. Eight months after returning to Cyprus, Michael and Luke were allowed back to the UK to serve the rest of their sentences and were released from prison in May 2011.   2012-01-27T16:36:32+00:00 http://www.fairtrials.net/cases/article/tahir-mirza-hussain http://www.fairtrials.net/cases/article/tahir-mirza-hussain#When:12:00:55Z Tahir Mirza Hussain, a British man from Leeds, was arrested after an altercation with a taxi driver whilst visiting family in Pakistan in 1988. During the journey the taxi driver stopped the car and attempted to physically and sexually assault Tahir. When Tahir resisted, the taxi driver drew a pistol and in the ensuing scuffle was shot. He ultimately died of the wound. It was not contested that the pistol had belonged to the driver. It was also recognised that Tahir went immediately to the police and surrendered the pistol. Irrespective of this, and Tahir's repeated claims to have been acting purely in self-defence, he was charged and found guilty of murder. After a series of appeals and counter-appeals, the Lahor High Court acquitted Tahir of all charges in 1996. Although it seemed that Tahir had finally been exonerated, the family of the taxi driver launched a campaign to have Tahir tried under Islamic law. This was successful and Tahir then appeared before the Federal Sharia Court. They found him guilty and sentenced him to death. Tahir was therefore tried twice for the same crime without any change in the facts or evidence pertaining to the case, which is contrary to both national and international law. Fair Trials International met with the Pakistani High Commissioner to the UK in July 2006 to try to secure Tahir's release, as his execution was scheduled for August 3, 2006. He was granted a stay of execution for another month. Eventually, in November 2006, after spending 18 years on Pakistani death row, Tahir's sentence was commuted to life imprisonment by President Musharraf. As he had served longer than 14 years (the length of a life sentence in Pakistan), he was immediately released. He then returned to the UK to be reunited with his family. 2012-01-17T12:00:55+00:00 http://www.fairtrials.net/cases/article/andrew-mallard http://www.fairtrials.net/cases/article/andrew-mallard#When:10:45:33Z Andrew Mallard, a British citizen, was held in prison in Australia on a murder conviction for almost 12 years. He was found guilty on the basis of unsigned confessions and a 20-minute taped interview. The victim, Pamela Lawrence, was killed at her jewellery shop in Perth on May 23, 1994. The motive for the crime was assumed to have been robbery, but no jewellery had been stolen and there was no cash missing from the till. At the time of the murder, Andrew was being treated at Graylands psychiatric hospital for bipolar disorder. It was here that Andrew was first interviewed by the police. Andrew was later questioned at a police station for more than eight hours. The interview was not videotaped but one of the officers took notes and asserted that Andrew had confessed to the murder. He was, however, released after this interview. Andrew reported that during the interviews police officers suggested that he might be able to help them solve the murder by putting forward his own theories of how it had been committed. This is how his 'confession' came about. Andrew was again taken in for questioning a few days later. During these interviews, Andrew asserts that he was bullied, assaulted, and forced to strip naked. He consistently refused to sign records of the interviews as they did not reflect what he had said. Those interviews, nonetheless, were admitted as evidence for the prosecution. Andrew was finally arrested four weeks later and charged with murder. Despite the lack of evidence, Andrew was convicted on November 15, 1995 and sentenced to 30 years' imprisonment. Andrew's first appeal failed. A second appeal, based on information not disclosed to the defence, was dismissed on December 3, 2003 by the Supreme Court of Western Australia, despite the Justices admitting that information had been withheld. Finally, in October 2004, the Australian High Court granted special leave to appeal and in November 2005 the conviction against Andrew was quashed, and a retrial ordered. Andrew was finally released from prison on February 20, 2006, after the prosecution services in Western Australian decided not to launch a new prosecution. 2012-01-17T10:45:33+00:00