everything easier? I don’t think so. I think they knew exactly what they were doing. They’re a police force in a small community that between the months of September and May is probably a ghost town. For the entire summer it’s transformed into a 24-hour party, taken over by British tourists, many of who binge drink and cause trouble. To theZante police, Jonathan Hiles was just another one of ‘them’, and so was I. The entire investigation was disgraceful.
Our solicitors contacted Georgina Clay – the travel rep from our holiday in Zante. I didn’t know her very well, but I remembered that she was a lovely girl who’d worked in our hotel the year that we were there. We wanted her to testify in the extradition appeal because she’d arranged for British consular staff to visit Chris and Charlie once they had been released from the police station in Zante.
To our surprise, she told us that the South Wales Police had contacted her in 2007 and that she had made a statement to them regarding the case. At the time we couldn’t understand why the South Wales Police had started an investigation and not finished it, but it turned out to be for the coroner. When we heard that statements had been made to the British police, we realised that the five friends of Jonathan Hiles must have made statements too. We needed to see these statements – if they existed. I had no doubt that they would be real accounts of what happened on the night their friend was attacked, unlike the word-for-word identical statements they’d signed in Greece.
We had two days to go. There were over 3,000 members on the Facebook page, over 4,000 signatures on our petition and we had the potential for over 100 protesters outside Westminster Magistrates’ Court. Most importantly, we had the statement from the Greek investigation, and it was clearly flawed. All that we needed was the South Wales Police file to compare it to. At the time, my case depended on it. For this reason, it was decided that we would ask for an adjournment.
John Jones had already written up his skeleton argument because our request for an adjournment could have been refused. No evidence would be considered in our appeal, so our plan was to expose the evidence in the media as absolute bullshit, to protest,to fight the extradition based on the following four technicalities, and then to demand an investigation to clear my name.
The first argument was that the proceedings on behalf of the Greek authorities constituted an abuse of process – John cited several cases whereby judges felt they had the jurisdiction to consider comparable allegations.
The second argument was that the European Arrest Warrant was not valid due to a lack of summons on behalf of the Greek authorities. George Pyromallis had advised John Jones that in Greek law, the authorities must summon the accused before formal charges are made. This is something that the Greek authorities didn’t do. John Jones outlined the fact that the Greek authorities had my address from the beginning of the investigation. Thus, they were able to summon me to appear before a Greek judicial authority to present evidence of my defence at any time. John believed that the Greek authorities failing to do this beforehand and using the EAW as a summons was ‘a clear breach of Greek criminal procedure and a serious violation of a fundamental safeguard of the rights of the accused’. He also cited the case of Malcolm George Hay in which a British judge had disallowed his extradition to Greece on the basis that ‘he was not legally summoned’. In my case, the Greek authorities skipped the vital stage of a legal summons. For this reason, both George Pyromallis and John Jones believed the EAW to be invalid.
The third argument was that the extradition was incompatible with my human rights under Articles 3, 6 and 8. John stated that the mistreatment of Chris and Charlie suggested a risk of the same mistreatment on my return. He also cited
Our solicitors contacted Georgina Clay – the travel rep from our holiday in Zante. I didn’t know her very well, but I remembered that she was a lovely girl who’d worked in our hotel the year that we were there. We wanted her to testify in the extradition appeal because she’d arranged for British consular staff to visit Chris and Charlie once they had been released from the police station in Zante.
To our surprise, she told us that the South Wales Police had contacted her in 2007 and that she had made a statement to them regarding the case. At the time we couldn’t understand why the South Wales Police had started an investigation and not finished it, but it turned out to be for the coroner. When we heard that statements had been made to the British police, we realised that the five friends of Jonathan Hiles must have made statements too. We needed to see these statements – if they existed. I had no doubt that they would be real accounts of what happened on the night their friend was attacked, unlike the word-for-word identical statements they’d signed in Greece.
We had two days to go. There were over 3,000 members on the Facebook page, over 4,000 signatures on our petition and we had the potential for over 100 protesters outside Westminster Magistrates’ Court. Most importantly, we had the statement from the Greek investigation, and it was clearly flawed. All that we needed was the South Wales Police file to compare it to. At the time, my case depended on it. For this reason, it was decided that we would ask for an adjournment.
John Jones had already written up his skeleton argument because our request for an adjournment could have been refused. No evidence would be considered in our appeal, so our plan was to expose the evidence in the media as absolute bullshit, to protest,to fight the extradition based on the following four technicalities, and then to demand an investigation to clear my name.
The first argument was that the proceedings on behalf of the Greek authorities constituted an abuse of process – John cited several cases whereby judges felt they had the jurisdiction to consider comparable allegations.
The second argument was that the European Arrest Warrant was not valid due to a lack of summons on behalf of the Greek authorities. George Pyromallis had advised John Jones that in Greek law, the authorities must summon the accused before formal charges are made. This is something that the Greek authorities didn’t do. John Jones outlined the fact that the Greek authorities had my address from the beginning of the investigation. Thus, they were able to summon me to appear before a Greek judicial authority to present evidence of my defence at any time. John believed that the Greek authorities failing to do this beforehand and using the EAW as a summons was ‘a clear breach of Greek criminal procedure and a serious violation of a fundamental safeguard of the rights of the accused’. He also cited the case of Malcolm George Hay in which a British judge had disallowed his extradition to Greece on the basis that ‘he was not legally summoned’. In my case, the Greek authorities skipped the vital stage of a legal summons. For this reason, both George Pyromallis and John Jones believed the EAW to be invalid.
The third argument was that the extradition was incompatible with my human rights under Articles 3, 6 and 8. John stated that the mistreatment of Chris and Charlie suggested a risk of the same mistreatment on my return. He also cited
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