Remand prisoners scandalJ

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The Association for Legal Justice is to raise with Amnesty International and the European Court of Human Rights the growing scandal of remand prisoners in Northern Ireland.

There are currentiy more than 600 remand prisoners awaiting trial. One solicitor alone has at least 40 clients who have been more than 15 months on remand.

To be held on remand for more than 18 months is not unusual-and one man, John McAlister, recently completed 2 years of jail without trial.

These remand policies are effectively a back-door restoration of internment.

"This is a truly scandalous situation," said the Association, "especially when it is considered, by all civilised considerations, a prisoner must be presumed innocent until his case has properly come to a fair trial.

"Yet hundreds of these men are languishing in prison for many months and even years, denied the opportunity of proving their innocence."

It went on to demand that these prisoners be given the opportunity of a fair trial immediately, or released for lack of evidence.

The British labour movement bears a heavy responsibility in the struggle to end military repression in Ireland.

It is Labour minister Mason, backed by the entire Callaghan leadership who is at the forefront of army/police savagery and the maltreatment of prisoners jailed for their struggle against imperialism:

Every union branch and Labour Party must be pressed to send a strong delegation on the Day of Action in solidarity with Irish Prisoners of War organised by the Prisoners Aid Committee on November 26.

This support must be linked to a campaign in the labour movement for the immediate withdrawal of troops from Ireland, the removal of torture chief Mason along with the reactionary Callaghan cabinet.

The march assembles at Hyde Park at 2.30 p.m. and will march to Clerkenwell Green.

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PHOTO: Laurence Sparham, IFL