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Refugees: Tightening the Screw 129
African male asylum seekers, picked by Group 4. Yet 100 or so people of
many nationalities and both sexes had protested. The process was a lottery,
in which nine young West Africans were being scapegoated. Mike O’Brien
nevertheless told demonstrators outside Campsfield that he confidently
expected that the Nine ‘would all go down’. Both before and after the trial,
O’Brien repeatedly praised Group 4. Shortly before the trial the government
announced it had renewed Group 4’s contract, and O’Brien went to
Campsfield to deliver an Investors in People training award to Group 4.
During the trial defence lawyers told members of the defence campaign that
they had clear indications from the prosecution that they were looking for a
way of dropping the case but were under pressure to continue.
The case took ten months to come to trial. During this period, in Reading
and Feltham Young Offenders Institutions and in Bullingdon prison, four of
them made suicide attempts. Over half took anti-depressants. Four of them
had been severely tortured by the Nigerian military regime from which they
fled to find refuge in Britain; three were teenagers. Two now have refugee
status, two have exceptional leave to remain. Members of the defence
campaign visited the Nine in Bullingdon and Reading prisons and called for
the charges to be dropped. They had little faith in the British justice system.
The case might have hinged on the possible prejudices of the jury, who could
have chosen to believe either the West African defendants or their white
Group 4 accusers. Potential defence witnesses were nearly all fellow
detainees, too scared to give evidence, unlikely to be believed if they did, and
liable to deportation; the Home Office did in fact deport several potential
witnesses. Most of the defendants were stuck with the solicitors who had
represented them, or failed to do so, in their immigration cases. Supporters
convinced some of them it was worth changing lawyers, and struggled with
the administrative obstacles imposed by the prisons in obtaining letters and
signatures from them, only to find that Judge King in pre-trial hearings
refused the transfer of legal aid. He made an exception in one case. One of
the Nigerians in Bullingdon prison, who was first on the indictment, decided
to complain to the Law Society about his lawyer. He was allowed to transfer
to Birnbergs and Nigel Leskin, who obtained refugee status for him at his
second try, and he was then released on bail. Leskin worked on the case full
time thereafter. Together they spent many hours in Banbury police station
looking at film from the 42 surveillance cameras in Campsfield, returning
with yet more evidence that Group 4 was telling lies, which Leskin and his
counsel Henry Blaxland then used to devastating effect in court. Without
them, the outcome could well have been different.
The trial at Oxford Crown Court started on 1 June 1998 and collapsed 17
days later. Nicholas Jarman, QC for the prosecution, said the case ‘was based
mainly on eye witness statements’ by Group 4 guards. ‘No prosecution
properly conducted’, he said, ‘could or should invite a jury to convict on that
evidence.’ The prosecution’s abandonment of the case came shortly after one
of the Nine left the dock in acute desperation (the last Group 4 witness had,