UK: Campsfield trial disgrace (feature)
01 May 1998
On 1 June, nine West Africans, including two teenagers, stood trial on charges of riot and violent disorder, carrying a maximum sentence of ten years. The charges arose out of a disturbance in August 1997 at Campsfield immigration detention centre, near Oxford, run by Group 4 Security for profit. The prosecution had taken ten months to prepare. Over 50 prosecution witnesses were to be called. Dozens of interviews had been conducted, hundreds of statements, photographs and videos compiled. The trial was expected to last for at least eight weeks.
Just over a fortnight later, it was all over. On 17 June, prosecution counsel Nicholas Jarman QC stood up and told the judge, "No prosecution properly conducted could invite the jury to convict the Defendants on this evidence". The jury was directed to enter Not Guilty verdicts. What had happened?
The charges were based on video and eye-witness evidence purporting to identify the nine men in the dock as participants in a riot at the detention centre in which Group 4 staff were threatened, an internal gate was stormed, telephones, security cameras and TVs were smashed and fires were started in the centre's library and women's day room, causing thousands of pounds-worth of damage.
Even before the trial started, the prosecution case against the men was weakened by the withdrawal of video evidence against all but three of them. Group 4 identifications of defendants on video were no longer deemed reliable. That was a foretaste of things to come.
Using video footage from the security cameras and statements given by staff to an internal inquiry soon after the events, the defence demonstrated the unreliability of Group 4 staff's evidence. When Caryn Mitchelhill said she was trapped on her own in a corridor, surrounded by black men, her shoulders were grabbed and she was told "We've got you, white bitch," video evidence proved that it never happened - she was always with other Group 4 staff. When Chris Barry, Mitchelhill's boyfriend, said a foul-smelling chemical liquid had been poured over him, soaking his shirt, his shirt had been ripped, and he had passed out after a blow on the head, video evidence showed him up and about with a whole, dry shirt three minutes later. Witnesses who claimed to have identified defendants on the basis of weeks or months of acquaintance with them were confronted with incident reports of the previous day showing they had no idea who most of the detainees were. Staff claiming to identify defendants from vantage-points on the roof of the centre were proved unable to see what they claimed to see.
Some staff admitted they had got things wrong, told "undeliberate lies", or made mistakes. Others dug their heels in, digging the prosecution's grave in the process. Mitchelhill, confronted with the video which proved her a liar, blustered first that the woman shown on the video could not be her, and then that the video must have been taken on another day. Paul Bean was an escort for one of two detainees who were being moved out to a prison; it was their removal which sparked the protest. Bean agreed that holding a detainee round the neck was "extremely dangerous" but denied that such a hold had been used. Shown video footage clearly showing the hands of an orderly, Mr Galloway, round the detainee's neck, he explained that Galloway was "trying to calm the detainee down; he was using his interpersonal skills".
The story which emerged from the questioning of Group 4 staff was quite different from the explosion of terrifying violence they had tried to portray. Detainees waking early saw and heard two of their number being removed by squads of guards who refused to say where they were being taken. One detainee was held by the neck and seemed to be being strangled. A group of fifteen or so concerned detainees went down the corridor leading to the admin section of the centre (to which they had no access) to try to find a supervisor. Their attempts t