The following files (including this one) were added to this site October 20.
A Conspiracy Of Silence: an essay on bureaucratic stone-walling
A Few Odds And Ends: literally that
A Thirteen Hundred Word Précis Of The Case
Another Knife Case: a short essay
Critical comment on Ram’s second appeal and the post-mortem
Curry Rage – a short essay
Death certificate of Clarke Pearce
Guardian Of Democracy...: an essay on media misrepresentation
Letter from the Home Office to Jacqui Lait MP re Ram’s imprisonment
Letter to Lord Desai re Ram
Letter to the Guardian newspaper (unpublished)
Letter to the Guardian newspaper (likewise unpublished)
Letter to the Guardian newspaper, corrections department, (ignored)
Letter to Socialist Worker
Letter to the Home Office dated June 26, 2001 re Ram’s imprisonment
Letter to the Home Office dated August 6, 2001 re Ram’s imprisonment
Letter to the National Civil Rights Movement (unanswered)
Letters to Ram (unanswered)
Letters to (then) Prisons Minister Paul Boateng (unanswered)
Michael Stone Update
More Lies And Distortions... re the National Civil Rights Movement
Over The Hill: an essay on “anti-racist” brainwashing
Regina v Ram [1995]: the full transcript of the judgment
Scan of a paring knife
Scans of two flick knives
Song Of Satpal: a little light entertainment
Terry Dean on Clarke Pearce
The post mortem (autopsy) report on Clarke Pearce
The post mortem (autopsy) report – comment by an American doctor
Two Genuinely Controversial Cases Of Ram’s Trial Judge – a lengthy essay
Uncivil Lies: on the so-called National Civil Rights Movement
What’s In A Name? – a minor clarification
The following files were augmented in the October 20, 2001 update:
Agenda Driven Special Interest Groups (very minor corrections)
Bibliography (many including from April 2001 to date)
Chronology (minor additions including from April 2001 to date)
Mumia Abu-Jamal (added a paragraph)
STEPHEN LAWRENCE & DAMILOLA TAYLOR (added one note)
The above supercedes certain comments I made when the site was first set up, for example, the introductory blurb An Appeal From The Webmaster – And A Challenge (dated April 19, 2001) throws down the gauntlet to Ram by inviting him to forward me, among other things, the pathologist’s report. This part of the challenge at least is now superfluous; the reader should bear that in mind as he makes his way through the site.
Although considerable new material has been added to this site, there is a lot I wanted to add which sadly didn’t come to pass. Anthony Barker QC, who prosecuted Ram and who represented the Crown at Ram’s second appeal (the Crown was not represented at his first appeal, at which he was refused leave by the full court), declined to comment. Getting anything at all out of the Home Office was a labour, and I am most grateful to my conscientious MP, Mrs Lait, for chasing them up.
I wrote to the trial judge, Sir Harry Ognall, but sadly he ignored my letter. This was a great pity because of his well deserved reputation. I obtained addresses for Mark Stenson and Mark Trace, two of the independent prosecution witnesses. Neither of them replied to my letters. I also obtained an address for Narvinder Shinji, Ram’s co-defendant; I am disappointed but not surprised that he didn’t reply. I was also unable to contact the pathologist Norman Gower, but his report speaks for itself.
By far the two most important additions to this site are the full transcript of Ram’s second appeal and the aforementioned pathologist’s post-mortem (autopsy) report on Clarke Pearce. The latter was obtained from the Coroner by Mrs O’Neill; the former was obtained from the official shorthand writers, John Larking, for the princely sum of thirty-found pounds and eightpence (and was worth every penny).
I must apologise for the quality of some of the scans on this site. It is not that they are bad, but inconsistent with particular reference to size and shading re the longer documents. This is due both to technical and personal problems (incompetence).
This website opened for business on April 21, 2001; in the following four months, the Free Satpal Ram website was updated only twice: a brief message posted May 16 and another August 17. I would like to think that satpalramisguilty was responsible for stemming in part the lies of Ram’s campaigners, but there appears to be another explanation.
In June 2001, the killers of two year old James Bulger – Robert Thompson and Jon Venables – came up for parole amidst considerable publicity and even more controversy. Their applications were successful, as Lord Woolf and everyone else concerned in this affair intended them to be from the day they were convicted. They are said to have been released, although as they have been given new identities and their whereabouts are state secrets on a par with Ministry of Defence plans in the event of nuclear war, no one really knows for certain.
Ram’s campaigners and Ram himself probably considered that making too much noise at this time would not be in his best interests. Even the British public will take only so much. Ram was also campaigning to have his case referred back to the Court of Appeal, as spurious an application as one could imagine.
It may also be though that Ram had been told that if he behaved himself for the next year or so and kept a low profile that he had a real chance of being parolled in the not-too-distant future. His transfer to an open prison (August 17 above) indicates as much. Needless to say, Mrs O’Neill and her family were not too happy with this development; what has he done to deserve open prison, much less parole, she asked? I phoned her on the evening of September 5 to tell her that I had found a reference to Ram in Hansard (which is available on-line). Apparently he had been allowed to visit his mother in hospital (obviously under a heavy escort). She told me then that she believed that Ram would have home leave early next year. A few minutes later she phoned me back to tell me that she had just phoned her and Clarke’s sister (Mrs Smith) who had heard from an official source that Ram had in fact now been transferred back to a Category B prison, with all the consequences that would entail.
On September 7, I turned on the evening news on Channel 4 about 19.15, a programme I don’t usually watch, and by chance found myself slap in the middle of a report on Ram, which included him speaking from prison. It had just been announced that the Criminal Cases Review Commission had declined to refer his case back to the Court Of Appeal.
The interviewer was totally uncritical, something that was unforgivable because Mrs O’Neill told me sometime ago that she’d had a call from someone at Channel 4 who had been on this website.
The programme revealed that in October of last year, the Parole Board had recommended Ram’s immediate release – which in view of his behaviour is incredible – but that it has been blocked by then Home Secretary Jack Straw, a man I have never greatly admired, but this raised his standing in my eyes considerably.
It was also revealed that Ram’s mother had died from leukaemia.
When I checked the Free Satpal Ram website on September 8, it was reported that
“Satpal has been moved again this time To HMP Blakenhurst”
This message was said to have been
“Posted Tuesday 4th September”
but it had not been posted when I checked the site on September 6.
A further update was posted to the site dated “Monday September 9th 2001”; Monday was actually September 10th! In addition to the de rigueur lies (“...Ram was racially attacked...” etc and ad nauseam) it gave a useful chronology of recent events which has been added to the chronology on this site.
As I have said before, Mrs O’Neill is resigned to her brother’s killer being released one day; whether or not that day is sooner, or as now seems the case, later, one thing is for certain. And that is that Ram will fool only the most dedicated of self-deluded “anti-racists” if this website has anything to do with it. This update was followed by an outrageous article in the Guardian newspaper’s G2 supplement. A journalist named Simon Hattenstone spent a year researching this story during which time he interviewed Ram several times, visited him, and spoke to, among others, Ram’s solicitor. And in all that time he does not appear to have asked one critical question, like “Is it not true that you were drunk at the time of the knifing, Mr Ram?” or “How could you have stabbed Clarke Pearce in the back while the two of you were face to face?” I have deconstructed this article at length.
Alexander Baron
Sydenham,
South London.
September 23, 2001
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