14
TIME dragged unendingly. It always does in prison, but in that place with no natural light and its cramped sterility you really felt a pause button had been pressed on your existence. We used to call it the bat-cave.
Every night, after lock-up, I would lie there, look at the ceiling and repeat the mantras that worked for me before. This is not your life. You do not choose to be here. Don’t let this define who you are.
Altogether we had 90 minutes a day out of our cells. An hour’s exercise in the yard and 30 minutes’ association, when you could grab a shower, wash your clothes and maybe play a game of pool if you had time. The rest of it, you were alone.
The routine was broken at intervals by other formalities, which for someone in there long enough formed their own, overarching routine. This created a routine beyond the routine, for the prison within a prison. Every 28 days we had to move cell, in case we were digging tunnels, despite the fact we only had plastic cutlery. How the hell they thought we could burrow out of there with a Spork when the SAS only managed one door with sledgehammers, God knows.
Screws were moved between wings every three months and moved off the HSU altogether every six months. They did not want lasting relationships developing between officers and inmates. Top criminals can be charismatic and could conceivably turn staff into conspirators. I rarely spoke to them anyway so that didn’t bother me.
One of the hardest things to get used to was the night-time checks. Officers would observe inmates sleeping in their cells every 15 minutes throughout the night. You could hear them shuffling around, before a little red light would come on while they watched what you were doing. To begin with it woke me up every time.
If you had a serious problem with something, you had to go to Governor Arden, the top man in the HSU who only appeared on the wing occasionally. A tall, ginger, very slender character, he always struck me as a typical civil servant. Marks and Spencer suit, short back and sides haircut, with a clipped voice. When anyone spoke to him, especially Hamza, he would reply with a nervous stammer. Even minor, vocal confrontation made him uncomfortable.
For two months I lingered in there on remand, before my pleas and directions hearing, at which I went not guilty on solicitor’s advice. Dentif came in for regular meetings. The first time he smiled, shook my hand, then scribbled down six words on a piece of paper and passed it.
How much money have you got?
He wanted to know what legal costs I was able to pay for before we began. Not the best starting point, but at least we understood each other.
At that stage we were yet to understand the sheer depth of evidence but he spoke candidly about realities, explaining that my stay in the HSU was costing the taxpayer £5,000 a week. I talked to Roger about it, who laughed knowingly.
‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘Five grand per man. And they are not going to invest all that money for us to walk scot-free, are they?’
Prisoners on the HSU had a 98 per cent conviction rate when their cases went to court, which was not especially encouraging. Whether they were guilty or not, many of the reasons for that were environmental.
All of us were aware that legal visits were bugged. No one had laid it out in so many words, but with men involved in international terrorist conspiracies on the wing, there was no chance to speak to your legal advisor, or any other visitor, freely and unmolested. As far as the authorities were concerned it was a matter of national security and they were entitled to infringe civil liberties.
In one sense you could understand that, but it meant that any evidence, alibis or strategies you discussed with your solicitor would become known to the prosecution before the trial. On the other hand, they were able to prepare their evidence without your knowledge. To my eyes, that compromised the principles of a fair hearing and the basic tenet of ‘innocent until proven guilty’, but when you are in that situation, there is nothing you can do about it.
Visits took place in special block. After being notified of the visit a screw would handcuff you and walk you off the wing, through the self-opening and locking set of security doors and out as if you were going to the exercise yard. You would have to strip, be searched and given a fresh set of sterile clothing to wear. After the visit you were searched again, the clothing was taken off you and bagged, before you were given your old clothes back.
During any non-legal visit, a prison officer would sit in the booth with you. There were cameras trained on both your face and that of your visitor, checking for non-verbal communication. If you covered up your mouth with your hands, the visit was stopped. If you used any sort of code, the visit was stopped. If you conversed in any language other than English, the visit was stopped.
All visits had to be pre-approved by the police, meaning prior to the day they would meet your visitor at their home to satisfy security measures. Unfortunately, when my mother first visited, during my initial fortnight on the wing, she had not been approved yet. The governor allowed her a discretionary pass, but because security protocol was not satisfied, she had to sit behind a screen. To make matters worse, there was a problem with the internal prison transport and guards escorted her, on foot, through the whole length of the grounds, past the various cell blocks, all the way to the HSU. By the time she arrived she was crying and snivelling. Seeing Abu Hamza sitting in the next booth with his lawyer didn’t help calm her down either.
‘Are you all right, are you all right?’ she kept asking, looking at the scabs I had on my face from when I’d been arrested.
I tried to make her feel better. ‘Don’t worry Mum, the case is terrible. They’ve got no evidence. I’ll be out of here in no time.’
‘I love you John,’ she wailed, ‘I love you so much.’
When the visit was done I told the screws I didn’t want her to come back. It was better for both of us if she stayed away. Being in there was hard enough as it was and from then on, I kept in touch with Mum by the prison phone, speaking to her regularly. I hope she understood my reasons.
In addition to the costs of keeping a prisoner in the rarefied environment of the HSU, the specialist bombproof lorry escorts to and from court cost £20,000 a day. Originally mine and Kevin’s trial was scheduled for the Old Bailey, but they knew it had the potential to be a lengthy procedure and would therefore be highly expensive.
When Belmarsh had first been built, the designs included a secret tunnel which ran underneath the road directly to Woolwich Crown Court. Like everything else about the place it had been constructed with the movement of high-profile IRA operatives in mind and reduced costs considerably. All they would have to pay for was a squad of armed officers to escort prisoners through the tunnel. Our trial was duly switched to there.
All these details fed into the near-impossibility of being found innocent. For most of the prisoners on the HSU, whose faces had been splashed all over newspapers and TV news, trial conditions were different to the norm. When Roger had his trial in Luton, they constructed a scaffold around the courthouse with armed police all over it. Helicopters hovered in the sky above. Imagine the psychological impact on jury members as they arrived!
Equally, you can foresee a jury confronting someone like Abu Hamza and being totally jaundiced. If someone has been built up into a figure of hate by the media, objectivity is impossible. Regardless of any mitigating circumstances, high-security status was a shortcut to a guilty verdict and we all knew it.
The only one who struggled to accept this grim reality was Kevin, which worried me as he was my co-defendant. In the visits I had with Dentif, over time it had become clear to me that our case was hopeless and that as I suspected, they had been monitoring him.
The police had occupied a flat opposite Kevin’s house since early summer and watched his every move for two months. They had 45 surveillance videotapes and in several of them he was blatantly casing jobs. I was only in the last three.
By the time I arrived from Spain they knew he was red hot and were on him like fleas. He could not go to the toilet without them knowing about it. The thing that really stuck in my craw was that my sixth sense had been right. The van and car I had seen had both been full of police, as I suspected. It played on my mind. I should have got myself out of there. I should have known better. The bottom line was that Kevin had been really sloppy.
His cars were radar-tracked and bugged. They had films of him waiting for security vans, films of his meetings with me and others. They had literally every kind of evidence you could possibly have and their case was watertight. It was hard not to feel angry. Maybe because he needed the money so much, Kevin had put himself on offer, but as a result he had dragged me down with him.
I tried speaking to him on association, or in the exercise yard.
‘You’re completely fucked mate. We need to work something out.’
‘What are you on about?’
‘Mate, the evidence is overwhelming. You need to start thinking straight.’
‘They can’t get me. No chance.’
‘If we don’t plan something here, we’re both getting stitched up.’
‘Leave off, John. You’re thinking like them.’
All that ‘Untouchable’ rubbish had gone to his head. He was delusional.
By the time I had been on the HSU for three months, Abdi, another Muslim kid, a convicted murderer, was transferred in from the main prison for fighting. I got on quite well with him. Roger did too. We were out on association one day and he came and sat next to me, holding a bag of chip sticks.
‘Do you want some crisps?’ he said.
‘No, you’re all right mate.’
‘No really, have some crisps.’
‘I don’t want any!’
He fixed me in the eye.
‘I think you do. Just try them. They’re nice crisps.’
Sensing that there was something going on, I took the bag. It was heavy. A quick glimpse revealed a Nokia cellphone covered in crumbs and salt. I have no idea how he got it past all the security measures, but there it was.
That mobile phone was like a rare diamond to us. We looked after it collectively and passed it around. When night fell and the lights were off, whoever had the phone could send texts or make whispered phone calls. The first night with the phone in my possession, I called Aaron. He was back in Holland at the time.
‘What the fuck’s happening?’ he asked.
‘Mate, I’m fucked. You’ve got to come and get me.’
‘What about Kevin? Isn’t he going to get you off?’
‘Nah, he thinks he’s going to beat it.’
‘Is there any way you can get out?’
‘There’s nothing mate. This place is like Alcatraz. Just make sure you’re ready. If an opportunity comes, I’m going to need you. It might be difficult, might involve some aggro. You know what I’m talking about, don’t you?’
‘Of course mate, no problem, whatever it takes. All you have to do is give me a call, you know that.’
I was determined not to become desperate, but at the same time it was tough to contemplate spending too long in the HSU. The sheer deprivation would fry your brains and the food was appalling. Dinner was cooked in the prison kitchen at 3pm and served to most of the prisoners by four, but because it had to be wheeled all the way through the grounds and pass through security checks before it got to us, we would not receive it until nearly five.
It was poor-quality prison muck anyway, but it was also cold and congealed by the time it reached us. After three solid months of putting up with it, I could take no more. I looked at my plate one day, then at the other boys and said, ‘Fuck this. Do you know what? We should refuse to eat it. Maybe they’ll have to do something about it then.’
My idea was met with instant agreement and word spread quickly. Messages were passed on exercise sessions and prayer meetings. Within a couple of days, all four wings of the HSU had agreed to unite on hunger strike.
That Friday afternoon, when they wheeled the hot plate over from the main prison, no one ate. No dinner became no breakfast and then no lunch the following day. Twenty-four hours in, Governor Arden came to see us.
‘L-l-look I just want to know why you’re n-n-not eating. W-w-what do you hope to ach-ch-chieve?’
We explained our reasons. That night after bang-up, I watched the news on TV in my cell. There were a couple of items about the economy and wars in the Middle East and then it came.
‘Inmates in the high security unit at Belmarsh jail have gone on a hunger strike, led by notorious imam, Abu Hamza,’ they said.
I could not believe what I was seeing and rushed to my door, shouting through the bars.
‘Rog, Rog we’re on the fucking news!’
‘No way!’ he shouted back.
‘And guess what Hamza, they’ve pegged you as the ringleader!’
‘Bloody hell,’ Hamza’s voice came back. ‘I was only following you lot!’
It seemed his fate to get the blame for everything. In the end we lasted three days and every national newspaper carried the story, causing enough embarrassment to prison authorities for them to address our concerns. Arden came back and promised improvements. We started eating and from then on, they never served us two-hour-old meals again.
As our trial date approached, Kevin and I received regular police visits and we both noticed that the conversations began taking on a different character, broadening out, which concerned me. My fears were confirmed by Milner, who called me one evening.
‘John, they’ve got some very serious bits and pieces they want to attach to your case. Yet another armed robbery and a multiple shooting. They’ll be taking you out of Belmarsh to interview you sometime in the next few days.’
The chance to nail Kevin once and for all was too much to pass up, so they were taking the approach of throwing as much mud at him as possible and hoping some would stick. By being seen as his accomplice I was in danger of guilt purely by association.
These were crimes committed while I had been in Spain and the police knew that, but it’s all part of their game. Once they have you in a place like the HSU they can stick extras on you because your circumstances make you vulnerable. It gives them the opportunity to tidy up their backlog of unsolved crimes. Serious Crime and Flying Squad officers have targets to meet, like all the rest of them. Nonetheless I was excited by the news and spoke to Roger in the exercise yard.
‘They’re taking me out,’ I told him. ‘I can’t wait. I tell you what, if I see a chink of light, any sliver of a chance, I’m gone, no bother.’
Every day from that phonecall onwards I woke up sharply at six in the morning, listening for any sounds of a police van turning up. Psychologically, I prepped myself and worked out how it could happen.
‘They’re going to get you out,’ I thought, ‘and put you in a car. You’ve got to do something to stop that car, whatever you need to do. Aaron can be there waiting. It’s your fucking chance.’
Three days after I spoke to Milner, the door crashed open at about 8.30am.
‘This is it,’ I thought.
‘You’ve got a police visit,’ the screw said.
As usual we went through all the standard rigmarole, doors locked and unlocked, changes of clothes, strip-searching. Once the procedures were done they took me down to HSU reception, the first time I had been there since my arrival. The familiar faces of DCI Foreman, DCI Currie and their various acolytes stood around by the door.
‘Hello John,’ Currie said. ‘Long time, no see.’
They handcuffed me to Foreman and took me out. My heart sank when I saw they had brought a lorry. Foreman walked me over, put me in the Perspex box and took the cuffs off. About ten minutes later they brought Kevin in and locked him into a separate box next to mine.
As soon as the lorry had driven out of the prison grounds, Foreman took a seat near my box.
‘Jonathon Michael McAvoy,’ he said, ‘we’re going to arrest you for further offences this morning. You’re being charged with a series of conspiracies to commit armed robbery between July and September of last year and the fatal shootings of Paul Anthony Lewis and Nicholas Wellington.’
He then turned to Kevin and said exactly the same thing. While he reeled off his little speech again the lorry screamed off and did not stop for 20 minutes. As with the last time, the windows were taped up and it was impossible to see where we were headed.
When it did eventually pull up we emerged into the rear car park of Walworth Road police station, which absolutely crawled with armed officers. I took a few breaths and accepted my fate. There would be no chance of escape that day.
I was taken in, placed in a cell and within minutes Dentif was at my door.
‘I have been a solicitor for 20 years,’ he said. ‘And I have never seen security like this. They’ve set up an armed perimeter and are preventing anyone from entering while you’re here. It’s crazy.’
Once the interviews began, two things became clear. Firstly, the shootings were nonsense and they knew it. I had nothing to do with them and hadn’t even been in the UK. I had never even heard of the victims.
The further conspiracy charges were also a stretch, to say the least. Although I had only met up with Kevin for the final six days of the two months they had watched him, they decided to charge me for all of Kevin’s illegal activities during the whole period. Their reasoning was that he had been planning robberies and waiting for me to return from Spain to commit them with him, in some pre-arranged set-up, which was pure fantasy. As I learned though, the law relating to conspiracy is a slippery and malleable thing.
Dentif explained it to me as being like a bus journey. The bus might start at one end of a town and finish at another. You may have only ridden the bus for a couple of stops, but the fact you were a passenger at all made you responsible for anything that happened during the whole trip.
Currie laid out all the crimes for which I could be deemed culpable, with a sense of satisfaction. Dentif was largely quiet, but I could tell from his manner that we were hamstrung. He had a downcast expression.
Once he had achieved the desired effect, Currie stopped and paused. He stood up, stretched, took a couple of steps towards the back of the room then turned around.
‘Do you know what we’re going to do, John?’ he said. ‘We’re going to give you an opportunity.’
Dentif looked my way and raised his eyebrows.
‘Myself and DCI Foreman will leave the room, we’ll switch all the recording equipment off and you and your solicitor can have a discussion in complete privacy. We’ll let you prepare a statement now and we’ll seal it in an evidence bag and leave it unopened until the day of your trial. If you’ve got a real defence, it won’t change between now and the trial and that will stand you in good stead. But obviously if you change your story between now and then, it won’t look good. What do you say?’
Dentif burst out laughing. ‘That’s a good one!’ he said. ‘There’s no chance on God’s earth my client will limit his defence in that way and you know it! I really have heard it all now!’
Despite the bravado, that meeting brought home to us the scale of the case they were planning. Being sentenced for my second armed robbery would be bad enough and would ensure a hefty sentence, but with the add-ons literally anything was possible. They were aiming to hang us out to dry.
That evening they took us back to Belmarsh. I knew there was no hope of getting away while I remained in the HSU. I would have to come up with something else.