CHARGES of riot and violent disorder against former detainees at Campsfield ImmigraDOIN Detention Centre were thrown out at Oxford Crown Court on June 17 1998.
All nine men seek political asylum as a result of persecution suffered or feared should they return to their home countries in West Africa. But, instead of walking free, five IT of these entirely innocent men were immediately transferred into Rochester Prison. Stanley g Nwadike, i Enahoro Esemuze, John Quaquah, 17-year-old Sambu Marong and Harrison Tubman.
The three free men are Nigerians Stanley Ozidede and Edward Onabanjo Agoro, student leader opponents of the Abacha regime who have been granted political asylum in the UK, and Lucky Agbebaku, who received exceptional leave to remain in the UK on the day the trial collapsed.
The ninth defendant, whose case was stopped because he was found not fit to stand trial, is a another lad (minor) now in a north London mental hospital receiving treatment for illness caused by the abuse he has suffered under Britain's barbaric methods of treating asylum seekCLO.
During the trial, Group 4 prosecution witnesses perjured or contradicted themselves, caught out THE GOA by the video evidence of their own CCTV spy cameras inside and the Chief Immigration Officer at Campsfield, a civil servant, confessed that, contrary to his previous statement he could not identify any of the defendants.
The trial's collapse shows that the charges should never have been brought. The motivation for bringing the charges on the basis of non-existent evidence was clearly political.
On the day after the protest on August 20 1997, Home Office junior minister Michael Guilty: Jack Straw's vicious O'Brien Home Office team issued a press statement in which he made remarks prejudicial to the possibility of a fair trial.
A lawyer present in Banbury police station reported that charges were only made following a phone call 'right from the top' in the Home Office to officers reluctant to press charges. In view of these facts the Campsfield Nine Defence Campaign, whose participants include the only three former defendants who are free, called immediately after the trial for:
• The immediate release from Rochester jail of the five men found innocent of all charges (John Quaquah, Enahoro Eseniuze, Stanley Nwadike, Harrison Tubman and Sambu Matong) and the granting to them and Nosa Imasuen of refugee status or exceptional leave to remain.
• The resignation or sacking of immigration minister Michael O'Brien for * his role in setting up this shameful show trial; * for prejudicial remarks before the trial started, * for perversely misinterpreting the Chief Inspector of Prisons' report on during the trial * and for impropriety arid provocation in travelling to Campsfield to present Group 4 with an award for 'excellence in training' from the Heart of England Training and Enterprise Council. • Home Secretary Jack Straw to apologise to all nine of these innocent men two of them in fact minors) for the malicious and wrongful prosecution to which they have been subjected. • Home Secretary Jack Straw to agree immediately that all nine innocent men should receive an appropriate financial settlement as a token of compensation for the wrongful imprisonment, suffering and persecution endured.
• Compensation to be included for such treatment as the mental suffering that on three occasions led defendants to attempt to take
CHARGES SC