Free the Campsfield Five!

Sue Lukes, Islington North CLP, calls the Home Office to account for the detention system that created the Campsfield riot last year and the trial that ended on 17th June.

"The prosecution was dropped and the accused walked free," said Home Office Minister Mike O'Brien, replying to questions about why the Campsfield case had collapsed. It was yet another lie. The nine defendants were cleared of rioting in the privately-run detention centre last year because the testimony of the Group Four guards was so "weak" that the prosecution QC said that he could not "invite the jury to convict on that evidence". Repeatedly, guards and an immigration officer in the centre were shown to have lied to try to implicate the nine men, and were contradicted by the video evidence.

One defendant, a 17 year old, "celebrated" the second anniversary of his detention for claiming asylum on the day of his acquittal. Two of them were granted refugee status while awaiting the verdict -- hardly "bogus" applicants. The others are still waiting. Campaigners and lawyers fought to defend basic human rights, knowing that the prosecution was only brought at the insistence of Home Office Ministers.

O'Brien felt it was more important to defend the interests of the companies that make millions out of private jails. He recently called a press conference to respond to damning criticism of the Campsfield regime by the Chief Inspector of Prisons. Flanked by spokespeople from Group Four and Wackenhut (who run another immigration detention centre), he announced the renewal of their contract. By then he must have known about the alleged racism and abuses at the centre. But, astonishingly, he went on to visit Campsfield specially, after the trial had started, to present an "Investors in People" award to Group Four for excellence in training and human resource management!

Like his hosts, he has trouble distinguishing fact from fiction. The accused have not walked free as he claimed -- five of them are still in a high security prison, temporarily denied access to their lawyers. Another was so affected he was ruled mentally unfit to plead and is now in a psychiatric institution. All of them have been detained, lied about by Group Four, the press and politicians, and faced prison sentences of up to ten years. The five still in prison and threatened with deportation are Stanley Nwaidike, aged 22, Sambou Marong, aged 17, Harrison Tubman, aged 19, John Quaquah, aged 32 and Enahoro Esemuze, aged 26.

These men should be free, and they should stay here as they cannot return home safely. Contact MPs, trade unions, Labour Party branches and anyone who will raise a voice for them now. The Campsfield trial has shown us how immigration detention can only be run unfairly, arbitrarily, abusively, violently and on the basis of lies and fictions told by the ministers, officials and companies who run it: end it now.

Contact Close Campsfield Campaign 111, Magdalen Rd, Oxford, tel 01865-558 145. http://users.ox.ac.uk/~asylum has a full account of the trial.

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