Open%20borders%20The%20case%20against%20immigration%20controls%20-%20Teresa%20Hayter

132 Open Borders
he said it was ‘as evidence of what damage was done’. ‘By whom? Detainees?’
‘Yes.’ ‘Did it enter your mind to tell the police about the smashed telephone
in case there was any doubt who did it?’ ‘No.’ David Bright showed a copy of
a letter written to campaigners on behalf of the Home Secretary, which said,
explaining the decision to prosecute detainees: ‘All the pay phones and other
telephones were ripped from the walls.’ He suggested that Group 4 might
have done other damage as well.
The spectacle of Group 4 in court had a notable effect not only on the
prosecution, but also on the judge. Judge Morton Jack initially made
disparaging remarks about the detainees. In refusing to accept that one of
the defendants, who had been held in Reading Young Offenders Institution,
was 17, he said the defendant had ‘told lies’. When detainees’ lawyers asked
for all of them to have hearing aids, he said he detected ‘an element of fashion
catching on’. His early decisions went against the defence. He refused to order
the withdrawal from the jury’s bundles of photographs of the fire damage to
Campsfield, although lawyers argued that, as none of their clients was
accused of this damage, to show it was prejudicial. He refused to accept
Henry Blaxland’s argument that, if the removal of one of the detainees could
be shown to have been carried out unlawfully, this would be relevant to the
defence. He said he would be strict on extraneous matter but allowed John
Graham to make derogatory remarks about detainees who ‘tore up their
documents’ and ‘make applications in two or three names’, yet refused to
allow the barrister Frances Webber to refute what she called his ‘inflammatory
and inaccurate statements’. He ruled that a minor must come to court
from mental hospital, heavily drugged and with an escort of two nurses,
refusing to accept legal arguments by Frances Webber that this was
inhumane and within his power to prevent, and only agreeing to discharge
the jury in his case four days later, after the hospital refused to send him to
court and he had given the prosecution the opportunity to seek a second
medical opinion. Yet, as the case went on, the judge’s attitude changed. By
the end, clearly irritated by Group 4, he was intervening to help lawyers to
clarify the contradictions in their evidence.
After the Nine’s acquittal, five of them were transferred to Rochester
prison, which they found hard to bear. After much pressure from their
supporters and from the media, and two more suicide attempts, all of them
were eventually released from Rochester on temporary admission. But most
are left in limbo, their claims undecided, and still under threat of deportation.
The brutal response from the Home Secretary, in a letter to campaigners over
the signature of Graeme J. Kyle, was that the trial ‘simply interrupted the
arrangements for the removal of those who have no claim to remain in the
United Kingdom. Now that the trial has been completed, the removal of those
who have no further basis to remain will continue.’ After the ignominy of
Group 4 in court, and after the suffering inflicted by Group 4 and the British
state on innocent people, ministers apparently intended to carry on business
as usual, with no apology or compensation for the Nine, and no action