UK: Who bombed Israeli embassy?
01 January 1999
A campaign has been launched to protest the innocence of two people who were convicted of conspiracy in relation to the 1994 bombing of the Israeli embassy in London. Samar Alami, a Lebanese Palestinian woman, and Jawad Botmeh, a Palestinian man, were sentenced to 20 years in prison last year at a trial in which evidence was withheld from the defence. After serving their sentence they will face the threat of deportation.
The campaign for Samar and Jawad was launched at a public meeting in June 1997 at which the defendant's solicitor, Gareth Peirce, veteran of many miscarriage of justice cases, stressed their innocence:
"What I realised after the end of this case is that I never, or almost never have been involved in a trial which has ended in a conviction where I am certain, completely certain, that the defendants are wholly innocent, and are wholly wrongly convicted."
Both of the Category A prisoners have consistently protested their innocence of the charges against them and believe that their only "crime" was "to believe in the right to self-determination and self defence of their people in the territories illegally occupied by Israel."
The case against the two began to unravel towards the end of 1998 with the disclosure by former MI5 agent, David Shayler, that the intelligence services had been warned about the embassy bombing before it occurred. The journalist Paul Foot then revealed in Private Eye (7.8.98.) that in September or October, two or three months after the bombing, another MI5 official had also cast doubt on the convictions of Samar and Jawad:
"Soon after the bombing a senior MI5 manager wrote a note expressing his view that the Israelis had carried out the bombing on their own embassy to embarrass the British government into more security for Israeli buildings and personnel."
The importance of this new information, in a case where many questions remain unanswered, has become all the more relevant as the defendants' have lodged an application for leave to appeal against their conviction scheduled for March 29. However, the prosecution has refused the defence access to the new information which raises more doubts about the fairness of their convictions. Effectively, the defendants are being denied access to information whose existence is publicly known and acknowledged. Before the appeal, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) will hold a Public Interest Immunity (PII) hearing confirming their intention to hide any further information that is not in the public domain. As Jawad pointed out in a recent letter:
"...this new information which is being withheld from us is vital as it represents our last realistic chance to prove our innocence before we slide into the kind of unnecessary, inhumane time wasting that occurred with the Birmingham Six, the Guildford Four, and many other miscarriages of justice."
The Freedom and Justice for Samar & Jawad campaign will be picketing the secret CPS PII hearing (at the Royal Court of Justice, Strand, London WC2) on March 15 as well as the application for leave to appeal on March 29 (also at the Royal Court of Justice, beginning 10.30am). The campaign would like supporters to write to the Home Secretary expressing concern about the case and sentence and to the Director General of the Prison Service about their prison status and conditions.
The Campaign can be contacted at: Freedom & Justice for Samar & Jawad, BM FOSA, London WC1N 3XX.