Fight the frame-up: support Samar and Jawad

Roland Rance and Susan Moore

Samar Alami and Jawad Botmeh are Palestinian activists wrongly convicted in 1996 in connection with the bombings. Paul Foot explains in his introduction to Justice Denied, a detailed pamphlet on the case, how he became convinced that the two had been fitted up.

Samar had a cast iron alibi for the embassy bombing. She was making a phone call from a phone box - from which (unusually) calls are recorded. But she forgot about this when she was first arrested and did not tell the police.

As her solicitor, Gareth Pierce explains, if she had anything to do with the planning of the bombing she would have made sure she knew where she was.

Among the evidence withheld at the trial is a report referred to by ex-MI5 agent David Shayler. He has revealed that the authorities had definite information about the bombings beforehand, but, whether from negligence or calculation, failed to act to prevent them.

This report, if true, would be devastating for the prosecution case, since it would establish that the bombings were almost certainly carried out by a state or organised group, rather than by two independent activists.

However, the defence case is still hampered by the refusal of the High Court to overturn the Public Interest Immunity (PII) certificates imposed in respect of this report. A PII certificate means, in effect, that evidence held by the state cannot be tested in court, nor even revealed to the defence.

Other possible grounds for appeal, including the attempt by an Israeli journalist to interfere with jurors, and the judge’s biased summing up, were rejected by the courts. This is despite the fact that there is no concrete evidence at all linking the two young people to the bombings.

Shayler’s statements, and the desperate attempts by the state to prevent them being raised in court, strengthen the suggestion, raised by journalist Paul Foot in a Guardian article, that the Israelis bombed their own embassy, and used a provocateur, the shadowy Rida Mughrabi, to entrap innocent Palestinian political activists.

"Mughrabi" was the person who persuaded Jawad to go with him to buy the car which was used in the bombing, and who handed Samar a bag of explosives before vanishing into thin air. But the authorities took no interest in him: they were not even asked by the police to provide a photo fit picture of him

Justice Denied is a compelling account of the way Jawad and Samar’s involvement in the struggle for Palestinian human rights was used to mask the lack of concrete evidence.

As Jawad said "We were involved in that process no matter how little our contribution meant to the result. But under no circumstances would we put that at risk because it fundamentally goes against our ideology, policy and practices. It would be self harm. Or else why would I, or Samar, ever get involved in student politics and NGOs and spend years campaigning peacefully if what we really wanted to do was use violence against the Israelis in London? They (the bombings) are totally counterproductive."

The Campaign for Freedom and Justice for Samar and Jawad continues to call for full disclosure of all the evidence in this case, as part of the struggle for the release of Samar and Jawad.