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Port Arthur "Mass Murderer" May Soon Be Released
Posted By: JoeVialls <homestead@bluemail.ch>
Date: Friday, 8 February 2002, 11:38 p.m.
THE QUEEN V. STEPHEN DOWNING IN LONDON, MEANS TIME IS NOW RUNNING OUT FOR THE CORRUPT AUSTRALIAN GOVERNMENT THAT JAILED MARTIN BRYANT FOR MURDERS HE COULD NOT HAVE COMMITTED
In April 1997 when I started my independent investigation into Martin Bryant’s conviction over the Port Arthur massacre, I had no idea that the mass of evidence produced would eventually grow to the point where it had to be incorporated in a small book called “Deadly Deception at Port Arthur”.
But regardless of what I wrote then, or what I might write in the future, there has always been, and always will be, the underlying and absolute certainty that a terrible wrong has been committed by the Australian political, prison, and judicial systems where Martin Bryant is concerned.
This certainty was brought home once again on 15th January 2002, when the British High Court of Appeal made its judgement in the case of The Queen v. Stephen Downing, an intellectually impaired young man who, just like Martin Bryant, had a clinically verified reading age of eleven years. In 1974 Downing was sentenced to life for murder, following an eight-hour interrogation during which no lawyer was present, and access to his parents was denied.
After Downing's original minimum sentence expired in 1990 his insistence that he was innocent prevented him from gaining parole and he spent a further 10 years in prison. The Court of Appeal concluded the original conviction was unsatisfactory because of the "failure to challenge the admissibility" of Downing's confession and the "substantial and significant breaches" of the rules of questioning suspects. In a unanimous verdict, Mr Downing’s conviction was quashed.
The Queen v. Stephen Downing serves as a valid precedent where Martin Bryant is concerned. Despite the fact that Bryant pleaded “Not Guilty” on all occasions preceding and following his police interrogation on 4 July 1996, no accredited guardian or lawyer was present to protect him at interrogation, and his mother was denied access to her own intellectually impaired son.
During October 2000, in an attempt to draw the glaring errors in Bryant’s case to the attention of Parliamentarians, I sent individual letters and copies of Deadly Deception at Port Arthur by registered mail to every politician in the Tasmanian Parliament. Bryant’s treatment as a remand prisoner during 1996 was appalling, and included continual and highly illegal strict solitary confinement with no access to any form of media communication whatever.
As human rights groups worldwide are aware, this obscene process is known as “sensory deprivation”, a form of psychological torture specifically designed to force a false confession from the prisoner. The illegal sensory deprivation applied to Martin Bryant from April to November 1996, could equally easily have been applied to any other Australian with insufficient intellect to object.
In an instant Martin Bryant’s world was turned upside down. Where before he had roamed the beautiful island beaches of Tasmania at will, he was now confined inside a tiny cell with a locked door. Where before he could communicate with anyone he wished, he was now deliberately cut off from all human contact including radio and television. His only regular visitors were prison officers and psychiatrists, trying to use his illegal isolation and resulting fear and loneliness, as brutal psychological levers designed to force a confession.
To these men acting above the law, the fact that Martin Bryant continually pleaded not guilty to the string of murders at Port Arthur, and the total lack of any evidence linking him to the crime scenes did not matter. They reasoned that sooner or later the sustained psychological torture would force Bryant to crack, thereby saving them the political embarrassment of a trial at which he could only be found innocent.
They were right. After valiantly managing to defend his innocence for six long and lonely months, Martin Bryant finally cracked during November 1996, and agreed to plead guilty to all 72 charges in return for a television set in his cell...
Story and pics at:-
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