The Great Escape
Civitas, 22 June 2011
After ten months in barbaric captivity, and a further three years in legal limbo, Andrew Symeou has been acquitted of manslaughter and can return to the UK. His story must serve as evidence of the worst excesses of the European Arrest Warrant, and be used as a platform to achieve long-overdue and far-reaching change.
In 2008, four detectives from the Scotland Yard Extradition Unit arrested Andrew at his home in North London. He was accused of killing 18 year old Jonathan Hiles at a nightclub in Zakynthos, Greece in July 2007. Although Andrew denied being in the club at the time, eyewitnesses claimed he had punched Jonathan, causing him to fall from a dance podium and sustain fatal brain injuries.
From the outset, the evidence against Andrew was at best dubious, at worst fabricated. Each of Jonathan’s five friends who identified Andrew as the culprit described the man in the club as clean-shaven, even though Andrew had a beard at the time, and four admitted that they had not in fact seen the fatal punch.
Not to be deterred, the Greek police took further statements from the friends. They showed them a photo of a group of strangers, among which Andrew was circled and labelled “perpetrator”. Although the police claimed the statements were made independently and over several days, the wording in each was identical.
The only other witnesses, two of Andrew’s friends, initially gave statements implicating him in the death; however, they both retracted their evidence as soon as they left the police station, claiming that the police had beaten them into submission. The group’s holiday rep who saw the two young men immediately after they left the station described them as clearly shaken and one had a visibly swollen face.
Unbelievably, Andrew himself was never questioned by the Greek police. Apart from a brief appearance before an investigating magistrate, the trial was the first time Andrew was able to speak to anyone in authority. Yet despite this effective gagging, Andrew was subjected to 10 ten months in Greek jails, including seven months in the Korydallos maximum security prison, one of the worst in Europe. “The prison was on three levels, and the whole of the ground floor was covered in blood,” Andrew recalled. “I saw a man beaten to death in front of me with metal poles.” Even Jonathan’s father, Denzil Hiles, concedes: “I would not wish that jail on anybody.”
The experience had a devastating and degrading impact on Andrew. “You feel like an animal,” he said. “I would walk up and down for hours, talking to myself. I was shaking: a mess, really. I remember banging my head against the wall.”
Although Andrew was eventually released on bail, he was unable to leave the country. His parents left their jobs to move to Greece and support their son, devoting their time and savings to fighting his case. After five false starts, the trial began three months ago, although the court only sat for 13 days. Yet, like the investigation before it, the court process was nothing more than a “sick war”; as only the prosecution can summon witnesses to court, Andrew was unable to question the police officers accused of assaulting his friends, and the patchy and conflicting evidence left the prosecutor with little choice but to recommend acquittal. The jury retired for two and a half long hours before returning their verdict of not guilty.
This farcical extradition was made possible by the European Arrest Warrant. Under the EAW scheme, each member state must accept that other EU countries operate according to fair and equal standards, regardless of the veracity of this assumption.
It is axiomatic that international police and judicial cooperation is essential for effectively combating terrorism and other serious, cross-border crime – however any system which allows injustice of this nature and on this scale is patently in need of reform.
Jago Russell, Chief Executive of Fair Trials International – the specialist NGO that has supported Symeou’s case from the start, and challenged his treatment at the European Court of Human Rights – has astutely commented: “As the Symeou’s finally return home…politicians in London and Brussels, with the power to build a better justice system in Europe, must not forget the ordeal this family has suffered.” Indeed, Helen, Andrew’s mother, is now demanding a public inquiry into the operation of the EAW system, which she derides as “a tick-box process…wide open to abuse”.
As Andrew himself acknowledged, in the context of a tragic and premature death, and years of suffering and injustice, “[t]here are no winners or losers…Today’s verdict has only stopped further injustice and a possible gross miscarriage of justice.”