Witnesses Needed: Many Recent Protests, Please Check

Witnesses needed witnesses needed witnesses needed - you get the message right?

Your help is needed if you attended any of the following: student protests. March 26th (UK UNCUT, Piccadilly, Oxford Street, Trafalgar Square), June 30th. And even if you didn’t attend – you can help simply by spreading the word.

What YOU saw during these demos might stop someone going to prison.

We need your help.
Defendants need your help.

We need you to respond to this call out and we need you to spread the word - especially through the student networks. Many people do not seem to know how serious this is. Already we have many people in prison when they really should not be there!

We need all potential witnesses to come forward.
If you were on any of these protests this could well be YOU!

The job of LDMG and GBC is to stop people going to prison by helping people prepare their best defence - but of late we are spending way too much time preparing people for prison instead, and many of the cases could have been so different if we had more witnesses come forward. It is hard to know if you could be useful as a witness but we hope to find that out if you get in touch with some basic information.

It is often the case during a trial that it is simply the police version of events against the defendant and it is often blatantly obvious that the police are lying (yes, shock horror). The judge and the jury often believes the police version of events in most case (yes, shock horror). And it often doesn’t mater if defendants are telling the truth, if they don’t have their own witnesses, they have far less chance of being believed and therefore being found not guilty. And in our experience it is people who have witnesses who are more likely to be found ‘not guilty’

Witnesses do not have to have seen the arrest or indeed the incident itself and often it is helpful if you were simply there, saw the mood of the crowd, witnessed unprovoked police attacks etc..

Judges dealing with these cases are being incredibly harsh in their sentencing, harsher than many of us have ever known before, and things show no sign of easing up as the public’s memories of the protests fades.

It seems like the courts are sending out a massive message to anyone who dares to challenge the cuts and the system that is behind them that people dare not protest and we need to support all those going through this court process. It could easily have been any one of us who were arrested and preparing for the possibility of prison right now.

There is no sense or justice in many of these arrests. Some people were trying to protect themselves and those around them when attacked by police in an unprovoked manner, many weren’t even doing that, they were simply ‘in the wrong place at the wrong time’.

So far it has mainly been people pleading guilty that have been sentenced but trials are now starting to take place and the gaps in the defence for some are huge as many defendants believe that if they get up on the stand and tell the truth, they will be found not guilty. Sadly it just doesn’t work like that.

As we approach the one year mark for some of these protests, many of those facing charges are incredibly stressed and others completely terrified of what lies ahead if they are found guilty and it is heartbreaking to see, especially when you know that it doesn’t have to be like that.

What little justice there is seems to have gone out the window. Their best hope is other people! I’ll say it again - they desperately need more witnesses to come forward in order to stop people going to prison.
Ok rant over.

There are various call outs that have gone out about specific arrests and we will try to collate these further over the next few days and add them to the following links. Please read through them.

In the meantime, please get in touch and tell us which protests you were on and where you were. You can leave it that vague for now. We will get in touch with you about specifics if you were in a place where people are calling for witnesses.

In the meantime these are a few of the requests we have:

People who witnesses the policeman falling off his horse on student protest in dec and / or witnessed the police charge into the crowd.

December 9th 2010. Parliament Square/Broad Sanctury between about 2pm and 3.30pm If you were in parliament square or broad sanctuary (in front of westminster abbey) during this time

9th December 2010. He was on Northumberland Avenue (Embankment end) outside
The Playhouse Theatre appx 8.20pm. But was arrested in the Haymarket W1.

Witnesses to events near the Treasury from about 5.30pm to 8.30pm on 9 December 2010.

Witnesses from March 26th at Trafalgar Square mid - late evening

There are more details of others here:

http://greenandblackcross.org/legal/appeals

and a couple more here…

http://ldmg.org.uk/witness%2520support.html

If you think that you can help please get in touch with LDMG and GBC asap
ldmgmail@yahoo.co.uk

and please cc your messages to
courtsupport@riseup.net

In solidarity