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Arts, Books, Legal, Literature, Scotland

Book Review: Conan Doyle For The Defence

SCOTLAND: TRUE CRIME

Fox

Conan Doyle For The Defence by Margalit Fox

Intro: How the creator of Sherlock Holmes unravelled a real murder and deeply troubling miscarriage of justice

ON JANUARY 25, 1925, a prisoner was released from Peterhead jail. Concealed beneath his dentures, so the prison authorities could not find it, was an urgent note from a fellow convict.

It included a message for one of the most famous men in the world – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes.

Oscar Slater, the man who sent the message, had already spent 16 years in prison for a murder he did not commit.

In 1908, an 82-year-old spinster, Marion Gilchrist, was living in a large flat in a prosperous neighbourhood of Glasgow. On the evening of December that year, her maid popped out to buy a newspaper. She was gone for just 15 minutes, but when she returned she found her mistress bludgeoned to death.

“Miss Gilchrist,” reports Margalit Fox in this gripping account of the murder and its aftermath, “had been beaten so savagely that autopsy photographs depict a face that looks as though it had never been human.”

Oscar Slater, whose real name was Oscar Leschziner, was born in Germany in 1872. He had lived in New York, London, Paris and Brussels as well as Glasgow. He moved in a dodgy underworld of chancers and semi-criminals, but he had no record of violence.

There was not a single link between him and Miss Gilchrist. Almost certainly, he had never heard of her before he was accused of killing her.

Unfortunately, the police were looking for a suspect. In Slater – a gambler, a foreigner, a Jew and a less than solid citizen – they found an ideal candidate.

His pawning of a brooch similar to one stolen from Miss Gilchrist brought him to their attention. It was not Miss Gilchrist’s brooch but this scarcely mattered. The police wanted him found guilty. In what Conan Doyle later called “a disgraceful frameup”, they made sure he would be.

Witnesses had seen a man leaving the scene of the murder.

In an identity parade, dark-haired, olive-skinned Slater was placed among 11 pale, pink Scotsmen. As a journalist later wrote, it was “like attempting to conceal a bull-dog among ladies’ poodles”. Unsurprisingly, the witnesses picked out Slater.

All evidence in Slater’s favour was either ignored or suppressed. At his trial, the judge gave a summing-up that was outrageously biased against him.

He was found guilty and sentenced to death. He had always been fascinated by machinery, but Slater surprised his warders by taking an interest in the gallows that was being constructed to hang him.

However, he was not to become too intimately acquainted with it – his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment.

In the words of a writer at the time, he was “held to be too guilty to be released, yet not guilty enough to be hanged”.

It was at this point that Conan Doyle became involved. With his big build and walrus moustache, he looked more Dr Watson than Holmes. But, Conan Doyle had a track record for reversing miscarriages of justice. Using observation and logic like his world-famous creation, he had already cleared the name of George Edalji in as bizarre a case as any Holmes had faced.

 

AN ANGLO-Indian solicitor living in the Midlands, he had been convicted of a series of animal maimings. Conan Doyle demonstrated that the man could not have been responsible.

Conan Doyle’s first efforts for Slater were unsuccessful and the convicted man continued to suffer in prison for years. Margalit Fox quotes extensively from his moving letters to his family back in Germany, which show he was very far from the unfeeling monster that had been described in court.

When Conan Doyle received the tiny note from the dentures in 1925 (it still exists in the Mitchell Library in Glasgow), he was inspired to try again. Times had changed, and Slater had so obviously been the victim of official dishonesty and incompetence that finally, after 18 years inside, the work of Conan Doyle and other supporters had its reward.

Slater was released from Peterhead prison on November 14, 1927. The rest of the story is not always a happy one.

Conan Doyle and Slater, who only met once face-to-face, fell out over money.

Slater was granted compensation of £6,000.

Conan Doyle thought he was honoured-bound to reimburse some of his supporters’ expenses. But Slater didn’t. The two men never communicated again.

And after 20 years of freedom, Oscar Slater died at his home in Ayr in 1948.

Nobody knows for certain who killed Marion Gilchrist. The only certainty is that it wasn’t Oscar Slater, who suffered one of the worst miscarriages of justice in Scottish legal history.

Margalit Fox’s engrossing book brings his case back to vivid life and highlights the part played in it by the creator of the world’s most famous detective.

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Britain, Government, Intelligence, National Security

A grave betrayal by British intelligence

TORTURE AND RENDITION

IT HAS taken almost 15-years to produce an official government report into British involvement in the torture and kidnap of terror suspects.

This is far too long and is disgracefully and shamefully overdue.

It shows that British involvement in George W. Bush’s illegal and barbarous programme of kidnap for torture was far deeper and more extensive than we have previously been told.

The figures within the report are stupefying: 13 incidents where British intelligence officers witnessed the mistreatment of suspects; 25 incidents where our intelligence personnel were told by the detainees they were being mistreated; and, a further 128 incidents where intelligence officers were informed by foreign liaison services about instances of mistreatment.

Thanks to the report delivered by the Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC), we at last learn for certain that there was direct ministerial involvement. It contains the revelation that the then foreign secretary, Jack Straw, authorised, at least once, the payment of “a large share” of the costs for an aircraft that was used for rendition purposes.

Quite simply, that is reprehensible.

The report doesn’t disclose the identities of the victims of that particular operation. It does, however, reveal they were taken to a location with a “real risk of torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment”.

Mr Straw signed off this payment in September 2004, and yet just over a year later he made a remarkable statement in the House of Commons which bears repeating in full: “Unless we all start to believe in conspiracy theories and that officials are lying, that I am lying, that behind this is some kind of secret state which is in league with some dark forces, and let me also say, we believe that US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is lying, there simply is no truth in the claims that the United Kingdom has been involved in rendition.”

 

MR Straw’s conspiracy theory, we now know, was true. This report lays that bare. Yet Mr Straw continues to maintain he didn’t know what was going on, insisting that he learned the truth of what had been happening for the first time from the ISC investigation.

This isn’t remotely good enough. The former Foreign Secretary was responsible for the British overseas intelligence service (MI6) at a time when something was dreadfully wrong.

Many will now believe that his emphatic statement in the Commons when answering questions about extraordinary rendition 13 years ago is remotely compatible with his protestations of ignorance today. Mr Straw’s conduct was deplorable.

So, too, was that of Sir Richard Dearlove, who was head of MI6 at the time when the US embarked, with British collusion, on its programme of extraordinary rendition and torture after the attack on the Twin Towers on 9/11.

The ISC report highlights the fact that British intelligence knew very early on that the US had changed its policy on torture to be far more aggressive, and yet they did not react, or even apparently deign to tell ministers.

In fairness, it was a very difficult time. There were fears of a follow-up attack and intelligence officers felt a patriotic duty to protect their fellow citizens. Some argued that the use of torture was justified by the extreme urgency of the international crisis which followed 9/11. It is worth reminding readers that in the late summer of 1990, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, and the government of the day sent an instruction around Whitehall saying that under no circumstances should British officials make use of intelligence obtained under torture.

Something changed after 9/11, and not for the better.

It is essential to bear in mind that one of the most important pieces of information leading to the decision to go to war with Saddam Hussein in 2003 was obtained through the torture of Libyan terror suspect Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi.

He told his interrogators that Saddam had close links with al-Qaeda. This information was widely used to justify the invasion of Iraq by President Bush, Vice-President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and others.

It was also completely untrue. Shaykh al-Libi disclosed later that he had fabricated these claims in order to mitigate his suffering.

This is one example where the use of torture proved utterly counter-productive. There are many other cases we know where it was simply worthless. Some victims pulled off the street were innocent of any terror involvement. For years, British intelligence and politicians lied about all of this.

It is important to remember that the first ISC inquiry into extraordinary rendition, which was carried out as long ago as 2007, concluded that nothing had been amiss.

MI6 withheld vital documents from the inquiry, causing the committee to reach a false conclusion and verdict.

 

SIR John Scarlett, successor to Sir Richard at MI6, was head of the agency at the time. This is the same John Scarlett who, as the head of the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) at the start of the century, oversaw the deeply misleading dodgy dossier on Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction. In effect, that was a propaganda weapon to sell the calamitous Iraq invasion to the British people.

It was once said that the health of a nation can be measured by the health of its intelligence services. If so, then something went very badly wrong with British intelligence, and Britain itself, at the start of the century.

Tony Blair, the Prime Minister at the time, must bear the heaviest responsibility, even though the ISC has produced no smoking gun linking him to torture. But Sir Richard and Sir John bear much of the blame.

Many unanswered questions remain, partly because Theresa May refused permission for key officials to be interviewed by the inquiry.

Pertinently, how much did Jack Straw really know? Why did intelligence chiefs not tell ministers the truth? What we do know for sure is that the intelligence services betrayed the values that Britain stand for.

So far, there has been barely a squeak of contrition from anyone involved. That isn’t good enough, because torture, and collusion with torture, are not just a betrayal of British values. They are against the law.

Action should follow. Dearlove and Scarlett should be stripped of their knighthoods. They have brought shame and disgrace not just on MI6 but also on Britain.

In less tolerant countries than ours, intelligence chiefs who have made much less serious errors get shot at dawn. As for Straw, he should be stripped of his Privy Councillorship.

And the question of prosecution must be reopened.

For our intelligence services to be effective, they need to have the trust of the British people, something they enjoyed for many years.

The ISC investigation suggests they are worthy only of contempt after their cynical betrayal of all that we stand for as a proud, civilised and humane nation. The torture revelations and the extent of the collusion is a disaster for British intelligence, and a disaster for Britain.

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Health, Medical, Research, Science

Homeopathy: ‘Evidence’ that could resolve its legitimacy?

HOMEOPATHIC REMEDIES

THERE were 2,700 prescriptions for homeopathic remedies issued by NHS GP practices between December 2016 and May 2017. Clearly, there are patients – and doctors – who believe there may be something to the therapy.

. See also Why is a medical body giving accreditation to homeopathic medicine? It’s unscientific…

And while patients’ stories are far from proof that homeopathy works, it begs the question: is it simply a placebo effect or is it something more?

Proponents argue that key evidence showing a genuine benefit is often left out of major studies that claim to review all the available evidence.

According to Dr Peter Fisher, a rheumatologist and clinical director of research at the Royal London Hospital for Integrated Medicine, there have been 43 summaries of homeopathic trials and 21 showed an effect greater than a placebo.

“This is a proportion very similar to what studies of conventional treatments find,” says Dr Fisher.

He is also critical of the way the trials now used as evidence that homeopathy doesn’t work were run.

One key study published in The Lancet in 2005 found “weak evidence for a specific effect of homoeopathic remedies” and implied they were no more than placebos. However, Dr Fisher describes the research as “failing to meet elementary standards of quality and transparency.”

The study analysed eight out of more than 100 randomised controlled trials – the “gold standard” for proving treatments are better than a placebo, where one group gets the real therapy and the other a “fake”.

“But the rules as to what studies could be included were changed half-way through,” claims Dr Fisher. “This excluded 93 per cent of available trials and skewed the results against homeopathy. When the study was re-analysed using the original rules, good evidence for homeopathy emerged.”

On the other side of the debate, Professor Edzard Ernst has said that the British Homeopathic Association has misrepresented studies that it claimed showed homeopathy differs from a placebo. While the two sides are poles apart on what the evidence shows, all agree the principle behind homeopathy – super dilution – is a problem, flying in the face of science.

Compared with standard drug treatments, once a homeopathic remedy has been diluted thousands of times, there should be nothing left but water. But what if it could be shown that something clearly physical is going on?

Dr Steven Cartwright, a research biochemist formerly of the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology at Oxford University and now employed at Diagnox, a commercial lab, is looking at precisely that. He trained as a homeopath after a single dose “cured” the hayfever he’d had for years – “I was curious to find out more.”

Using a group of dyes that have some unusual properties, he believes he’s discovered a clue as to what is going on. The dyes change colour depending on the liquid they’re put into. In water, one might show up as red, but blue in alcohol.

Exactly why is not clear, but Dr Cartwright believes it could be because they respond to electrical and magnetic fields. When he mixed some regular shop-bought homeopathic remedies with the dyes they produced different colours. “You couldn’t see them with the naked eye but they showed up when looked at through a standard bit of lab equipment, a spectrophotometer,” he says.

He believes something in the remedy was affecting the dye. “I think it was probably picking up an electric or magnetic charge, possibly the result of the vigorous shaking that goes on during dilution,” he says.

What’s more, the effect was stronger the more diluted the remedy, and different remedies produced different colours.

“It’s too early to make any claims,” says Dr Cartwright. “There is a group in Brazil working to replicate it.

“We might have discovered a radical new medical mechanism. But let’s see.”

The NHS view remains as previously stated: that there is no robust evidence to support homeopathy.

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