13

Welcome, Brother

THE high walls of Belmarsh echoed with voices. Prisoners shouted from barred windows to neighbours or friends in other wings. As we passed by, their cries echoed around the courtyards, building into an eerie chorus, like animals in a rainforest.

The van soon pulled up in front of a tall electric gate, beyond which lay a vast, squat concrete structure, like a giant nuclear bunker. Several officers stood outside with wolf-like Alsatian dogs on leads.

A bubbling in the pit of my stomach acknowledged the seriousness of my situation. This place did not look like other prisons. It looked like science fiction.

As they pulled me up from my seat I glimpsed my handcuffed wrists, realised how tanned they looked and shook my head. I would have to banish those kinds of thoughts. Prison had taught me before to live purely in the future. Thinking too much about what you had lost or were missing out on was a shortcut to despair. I had to be strong, never let them get the better of me. Good stuff doesn’t lose its cool.

The driver spoke into an intercom, the gate opened and we passed through.

Our van circled the foreboding building in front of us until we arrived at a loading bay at the rear. Again the driver leant out of the window and spoke into an intercom system. A huge steel door eased itself outward, until we were able to drive through the gap, then it slid closed behind.

The building had swallowed us. We were in the unseen catacombs of the UK criminal justice system, the belly of the whale. This was a new sort of underworld for me – a prison within a prison.

My eyes darted around. First impressions of the HSU were disconcerting. It was how I imagine the interior of a submarine would look, with claustrophobic, tube-like corridors and low ceilings. Everything was a kind of eggshell, off-white colour and strip-lit with fluorescent bulbs. It smelled strongly of bleach.

They began walking me through and it soon registered that none of the staff had keys. Every single heavy, steel door, of which there were many, opened only via intercom. A control centre sat in the bowels of the place where officers scrutinised CCTV monitors. They alone decided whether or not a door could open, a system devised to remove the incentive to attack officers for keys, or take hostages then demand keys be handed over.

As well as several leading members of the IRA and KGB, the HSU had previously housed Ian Huntley (the Soham murderer), Great Train Robber Ronnie Biggs and Charles Bronson, who has popped up in most places at the top end of the UK prison system. While there, Bronson famously took two Iraqi hijackers hostage in his cell, forcing them to tickle his feet and call him ‘General’. Unhappy with their service, he beat one around the head with a metal tray, then felt guilty about it and told them to attack him with it. Growing tired of his own games, he then threatened to kill them.

Once he had everybody’s attention Bronson issued a list of demands including a plane to Libya, two automatic rifles and some ice cream. Throughout my stay at Belmarsh, the officers talked about the incident with a strange mixture of humour and misty-eyed affection. Something my time in prisons showed me repeatedly was that the criminals perceived to be the most dangerous were also the ones afforded most respect by staff. They all want to get along with the top boys. Everything is topsy-turvy on the inside.

With this one building containing a selection of ultra-high-risk inmates, security was intense. No one had ever escaped from the HSU in its 25 years of operation. When first built they tested its impenetrability by locking the SAS in there, equipped with sledge hammers and crowbars, giving them specific orders to break out over the course of a weekend. In 48 hours and with specialist equipment at their disposal, the country’s elite commandos got through one door.

On the reception area for my wing I was strip-searched again then made to squat over a mirror to ensure I wasn’t concealing drugs in my anus. Still naked, they sent me through a metal detector to check for interred weapons.

The final indignity was an intimate frisk with a transmission sensor, to see if I had a mobile phone secreted in my bowel. Only in prison do you learn the numerous combinations of items that can be hidden up a man’s arse.

With all the cavity searching out of the way, they walked me up.

‘You’re starting on spur three,’ a screw told me.

Again I was genuinely surprised at the size of the place. It seemed so tiny compared to its external bulk. From the outside the HSU appeared a hulking citadel, from the inside, a few inter-connected tunnels. All the rooms and walkways were really compact. I surmised this had to be because the walls were so thick.

My half of the wing was empty because the inmates had been taken out to the yard. Two rows of eight cells each lined a central area with a pool table, two rowing machines, an exercise bike and a television. There were CCTV cameras everywhere and no sources of natural light.

‘You’ve got two options,’ a screw said. ‘You can go straight to bang-up in your cell or you can take your exercise now with the others. If I was you, I’d take the exercise. You only get one hour a day.’

‘Yeah, I’ll do that.’

Our footsteps echoed as I followed him along a corridor, through another pair of air-locking doors and into what can only be described as an enormous cage. Looking up, I could see sky, but carved into little blue triangles. Criss-crossed metal barriers formed walls and roof around us, casting a geometric grid of shadow on the ground.

On closer inspection I realised there were actually two layers of fencing with a kind of steel mesh-netting between them – a helicopter-proof design.

Standing there stirred strange sensations. The air changed, so you knew you were outside, but the light was so disrupted your eyes weren’t sure. It looked like something from a Mad Max movie.

Alongside us a guard sat in his own small, fenced-in area, detached from the inmates, observing. My officer showed me into the main yard and swung the gate shut. Just four days earlier I had been a free man, now I found myself in a metal enclosure with a bunch of top-end cons I didn’t know.

I tried to stay detached from the artificiality and remain alert, looking for weak spots. Is there any possible way I could get out of here? Nothing leapt to mind.

Other prisoners meandered around, some alone, some in pairs or threes. I moved slowly towards them. One looked up, saw me and began striding purposefully in my direction. I tensed up. Who was this? Was he going to try something?

I was ready. You have to be. He had close-cropped blond hair and a heavy build, but as he neared I relaxed. He wore a broad, welcoming smile.

‘Are you John?’ he asked, extending his hand.

‘Yeah.’

He hugged me. ‘I’m Roger, a good friend of your Uncle Micky. I heard you were coming here on the radio.’

Roger Vincent was charged with a contract killing, the shooting of a bodybuilder called David King, outside a gym in Hertfordshire. King was a tough-nut himself, a minder with links to the drug trade. The word around the game was that he turned police informer and when the powers-that-be found out, a hit was ordered.

Roger allegedly cornered him in broad daylight and ripped into him with an AK-47, releasing 26 rounds in a two-second burst. It was the first time that gun had ever been used for a gangland killing in the UK.

‘Are you all right?’ he asked.

‘I’ve been better, but yeah.’

‘I know,’ he said, smirking and looking around. ‘This place is a bit of a trip, isn’t it? Don’t worry, you’ll get used to it.’

We began to walk around the edge of the exercise area together.

‘Where have you been before?’

‘Just regular places, Woodhill, Aylesbury, that sort of thing.’

‘Well here you’ll find there isn’t too much trouble. The screws won’t bother you if you don’t bother them and the other inmates…well they’re an interesting bunch.’

For the first time I looked around at some of the others strolling the yard. A group of four dark-skinned men captured my attention immediately. I knew of them from the TV news.

‘Fucking hell, I recognise them,’ I said to Roger. ‘Are they the guys that did 21/7?’

He nodded silently.

Ismail, Mukhtar, Yassin and Ramzy had attempted to set off a series of suicide bombs on the London Underground on 21 July 2005. There had been a problem with some of the detonators which had not all exploded, but they managed to create havoc nonetheless. After a manhunt they were apprehended and sentenced to 40 years for conspiracy to murder.

Walking just ahead of those four were two other men, one of them quite large, with his shirt sleeves flapping around his chest.

‘Is that who I think it is?’

‘The man himself,’ Roger confirmed.

I instantly recognised Abu Hamza, the infamous, hook-handed imam of the Finsbury Park mosque in north London, who publicly declared his support for Bin Laden and Al Qaeda. He wasn’t allowed hooks in prison and his arms ended in stumps just below the elbow.

‘Come on,’ Roger said. ‘I’ll introduce you.’

We quickened our pace and soon were walking just behind him.

‘Hamza,’ Roger said. ‘This is John. He’s just come in today.’

Hamza stopped walking, turned around and smiled. He was missing his left eye and didn’t look particularly well, but did his best to be friendly.

‘Hello John,’ he said. ‘Welcome, brother. May you find strength here.’

‘Thank you.’

‘You’ll find it is not as bad as it seems.’

We exchanged pleasantries, nothing more than greetings and small talk, but he couldn’t have been more polite, which I found strange. He had barely been off the front pages of the tabloids for months and the media always portrayed him as a semi-hysterical psycho, frothing at the mouth and spewing bile.

The screws called time on the exercise period and we began walking back up to the spur.

‘Do you need anything?’ Hamza asked. ‘Do you want some food?’

‘No thanks.’

‘Are you sure? I can offer you milk and Weetabix.’

I laughed. ‘No, I’m all right.’

On arrival back at the spur, it emerged that he and I were neighbours. Hamza had the next cell to mine. I borrowed a towel from Roger and went for a shower.

When I returned, a little mound of Weetabix packs, some single portions of UHT milk and a copy of the Qur’an had appeared on my bunk. I assumed it was intended as an amicable gesture, but I had enough problems already. I figured it was important to avoid confusion, so picked up the book and went to his cell to return it.

‘Mate, thanks but you can have that back,’ I said.

He smiled, was even a little timid.

‘No, no, please keep it, just something for you to read.’

I put it on the table in his cell. ‘Really, I’m fine thanks.’

‘Okay, brother, no problem.’

There was no menace, no venom. He sat down calmly and accepted my choice, which I soon learned was typical of his demeanour. In the time we spent together in the HSU, he never tried to push religion on me again. I actually ended up having quite a laugh with Hamza. Contrary to his public image, he had a good sense of humour.

‘They say I’m a danger to society but everyone knows I’m “armless”,’ he would say, waving his stumps around. We used to make fun of him because he had a prison medic attending to him, who was the campest, most effeminate man you could imagine, a skinny mixed race guy with a stud earring and a high-pitched voice. Roger called him ‘Michael Jackson’.

‘The prison officers know what they are doing!’ Hamza would say. ‘They are taking the piss. You don’t give a gay nurse to a Muslim!’

He had a real hang-up about that stuff which made for some great comedic moments. There was one officer we used to call ‘Boyband’, because he looked like he could have been in Take That. Tanned, blond hair, fashionable dragon tattoos on his arms. Hamza refused to be strip-searched by him because he claimed he was homosexual. Boyband denied the accusation vigorously. It caused lots of problems, which we found hilarious, giving us all plenty of ammunition to make fun of Boyband, which really wound him up.

‘It’s nothing to be ashamed of,’ we’d say. ‘Come on, it’s the 21st century, just come out of the closet!’ We would all crack up laughing. The look on his face was priceless.

At the back of my mind lingered the thought that if I committed an armed robbery in Saudi Arabia, Syria or Afghanistan, Sharia law would demand an execution and as devotees, Hamza and the others would probably support that. Yet in jail we were all the same. Muslim, Christian, black or white, it didn’t matter, our common enemy was the system.

There were rare times when watching the news they would comment on something that touched their beliefs. But they never got agitated or insistent. On one occasion there was an item about the 9/11 enquiry.

‘It’s impossible,’ Hamza said. ‘The official version of this story is impossible. I was an engineer and I can tell you it cannot have happened like that. They are covering something up.’

The other Muslim inmates all agreed. Other than myself, Roger and Kevin, who arrived the day after me, most of the men on our side of the wing were in for terrorism related offences, but we mixed with them comfortably. I took it as a learning opportunity. I was unlikely to have another time when I could associate with Muslim extremists, so spoke to them whenever possible, not probingly, just general conversations about life. Their whole outlook and world view fascinated me.

‘I don’t understand why you pleaded not guilty at court,’ I would say. ‘Why don’t you do what the IRA did? Just sit there and have complete disdain for the system? The IRA never bothered denying their guilt because they knew there was no point. So they’d go in with the sole intention of wasting as much public money as possible. You lot should do the same. If you’re passionate about what you’re doing and you believe in it so much, why don’t you do the same thing?’

‘But we’re innocent,’ they would say.

There was a culture clash only in the sense that I saw the law as a blunt instrument, a functional thing, an opponent to be overcome, rather than a value system. Those guys did believe in the rule of law and they believed in it absolutely. It was just a completely different one to westerners.

Over time I even formed friendships with some of them. Ramzy was more or less my age and used to come and exercise with me on the bike and the rowing machines. We would set up circuits in the yard of sprints, burpees and press-ups. Sometimes Roger and Yassin would join in too.

Soon I started to really look forward to those sessions. The charge of adrenaline was intoxicating, even a little freeing. As I had on my first sentence, I felt my fitness improve and physical exertion helped relieve the boredom of captivity.

In this way we formed a kind of community and with such a large Muslim contingent, the annual festival of Ramadan, which occurred shortly after my arrival, was a big deal in there. It culminated in Hamza and the others having their Eid celebration, with special food delivered on to the spur and a table set up for all the biscuits and sweets.

‘Come brothers, come,’ they said. We joined them and shared their goodies.

I sat there and marvelled at the scene. Around that table, making small talk over jaffa cakes and plastic cups of orange juice, were armed robbers, a contract killer, a drug trafficker, four attempted suicide bombers and one of the world’s most infamous Al Qaeda activists.

‘Can you pass the Swiss roll please?’

That was life inside the bubble of the Belmarsh HSU.