Acquitted

After three and a half months of waiting some of it in the not so salubrious surroundings of HMP, the trial was meant to go ahead yesterday. So, in spite of leaves on tracks, rain like a hurricane and food poisoning to kill Jonah’s whale, I managed to get there. Early. For once. And my barrister the beautiful Danielle Cooper from Michael Mansfield’s Tooks Court wasn’t there and the clerk from invincible law firm Hughmans wasn’t there.

But guess who was?

With a new haircut and wearing a cheap suit, the ubiquitous DC Timothy Evans from Hounslow. Oh yes. This was his day in court to slay the she-devil that is me and he had built up to this moment in his head with the relish and rancour with which a lion kills a gazelle. Now there is nothing gazelle-like about me but he was surprisingly pleasant as he waited for the CPS barrister to show up. I asked him why six policemen had shown up to check if I was sleeping where I should have been (mind your own business) and he protested no knowledge.

Danielle came and we started to discuss the case. We were floating, which meant there was no court room readily available for us, we had to wait till fixtures fell or a court room became available. I was bailed to remain in the building, so I couldn’t even pop into Bentalls. So we waited and waited and waited.

Finally we got into Court 3 and the Judge, a scabrous old man called Fergus Irvine Mitchell , a known racist who is the subject of numerous complaints, delighted in making prosecutors and defence counsel squirm by his attacks on various parts of the criminal justice system, the witness service unit, policemen and translators. As for defendants, anyone in front of him could look forward to being not only hung and drawn but also deported. Even if they were EU nationals. A young Romanian woman up on a second count of pickpocketing ( not really serious on the spectrum of possible offences, you might agree) was told she could look forward to being deported after her trial, which hadn’t happened because the witnesses had been dewarned. When the defence counsel tried to object the Judge answered
“Do the French care what people think when they deport foreigners who are criminals?”

In one sentence he managed to undo a thousand years of human rights progress in justice, which this country is meant to be so proud of. So much for the impartiality of the Judge, due process and habeas corpus then. Maybe we could deport Judges like him to France? Power in the wrong hands can be not only dangerous but also potentially deadly. To justice.

We were fourth on the list for readiness and no CPS prosecutor had bothered to show up, although the CPS witnesses had. Let me explain a little about the matter to you.

Basically I went to an estate agent last February called William Lutayaa, a Ugandan who was introduced by a friend who owns another property company. I found out later that William’s company Arcade Estates is completely dodgy, it hasn’t filed accounts for years and he trades as a sole trader and a limited company. He found me a flat at 47c Queensgate allegedly belonging to a Pakistani dry-cleaner called Ambreen Quayyum Sheikh of Dalco Properties but when you look at Dalco Properties on Companies House it was dissolved in January and the new one not formed till late May. No documents which nominate or appoint directors include Ambreen Sheikh. But wait this gets better.

On the copy of the tenancy agreement which William gave me, the amount is £50 / week more than the copy he gave to Ambreen Sheikh. It also starts a week earlier, so he would have benefited from the extra £750 a week as all the money was to be paid directly to him. All three copies of the tenancy agreement were signed when I got to William’s office. I used his computer to download a copy of my passport for ID and he showed me pornographic images of young white girls on it. I was shocked and told him I really wasn’t interested in any of this. I later informed the police and he has never been investigated. He was more useful in the case as a Crown witness against me for allegations of tenancy fraud / forgery than as a suspect in a terrible case which affected young girls and damaged them probably forever. Yes, that is how the lovely DC Timothy Evans and the even less lovely Arlene de Silva think.

When it transpired that the tenancy agreements were different, my solicitor contacted DC Evans who was supposed to simply check out the address and who had first noticed in court ( the address had to be approved as it was part of a change of bail conditions) that William’s company was about to be struck off for failing to provide accounts. This was in spite of his assertion on his website stating he had traded successfully for 17 years.

When DC Evans started his investigations, he initially interviewed Lutayaa because he was the only one who stood to benefit from this, by any sane person’s evaluation. DC Evans is not sane or objective, he has been “investigating” me for six years since he seized my computers after allegations that I had been sending out stupid e mails about William Dalrymple and Allan Jenkins. Nothing ever came of those allegations, both men were pussy-whipped into making police complaints by their cuckolded wives. There are ways to handle cheating husbands, bent policemen isn’t one of them. My complaint about DC Evans stealing my Rolex watch was upheld and before the matter came to trial in 2007, the police paid me for a new one.

Since then probably because of the pay-out DC Evans has looked and looked for ways of charging me with the most stupid crimes and non-crimes imaginable. I can’t talk about the charges to which I pleaded guilty, there is a Newton Hearing in a couple of weeks and a strong possibility that I might withdraw my pleas and take this to trial as well. Suffice it to say I did NOT plead guilty to using Franco Miccolupo’s bank account or to £18 000 of housing benefit fraud.

DC Evans charged me with forgery because Ambreen Sheikh claimed she didn’t sign the tenancy agreement with the increased amount on it. Imran Khan who was acting for me in this matter told DC Evans to go and seize his computer and printer because only William could have printed the documents. He didn’t do that for three months, after he had warned William that I had told the police about the child pornography images I had seen.

Finally at 11am, a whole hour later than we were listed in Court 3 the counsel for the CPS barrister showed up. James Dawson was rumpled, scruffy and arrogant. He didn’t even apologise to Danielle Cooper or to the Court. He stated he was trial ready. Right. It was just a matter of waiting for a court to be free.

He had just received the brief and knew absolutely nothing about it, so Danielle invited him to answer some outstanding queeries that we had been promised by the CPS would be resolved before the trial. They included issues such as

1) What was DC Evans referring to in interview with William when he kept on referring to “his past”? We had been assured that William had no convictions and was not known to the police, His PNC came back “no trace.”

2) What is the relationship of Ambreen and Dalco Properties as we could not establish any?

3) If William now concedes that he printed all the documents, where is the forgery and fraud and who committed it?

4) Now that Ambreen concedes that it is indeed her signature after the UK’s leading forensic expert Michael Ansellconfirmed it could ONLY have been hers, where is the element of forgery?

At 2pm I went down to the lists office and saw the rumpled crumpled barrister standing there in front of me. I asked if he was the front of the queue, I hadn’t recognised him from the brief hearing without his wig and he said snarkily

“Are you Farah Damji? I’d rather not engage in any conversations with you, if you don’t mind.”

“Really? That’s fine.”

Barristers are not amongst my FaceBook friends. Well maybe one but he is cool.
He turned to the counter and said,

“In the case of Damji, the Crown wish to offer no further evidence. We need a courtroom as soon as possible.”

He then turned on his heel and made a passable attempt at indignance and stomped out as fast as his little feet could carry him. I was thrilled.

Months of hell ( DC Lightspeed Timothy Evans had started investigating this in February 09) had come to a swift end.

It transpired that three barristers from 2 Hare Court had returned the brief to the CPS’ Arlene de Silva because they could see so many holes in the case. No one wanted to touch it. Witness statements contradicted each other and themselves and the case was in shambles. This latest barrister who had been given the brief just hours before hadn’t a clue what it entailed and once he sat down with the statements and DC Evans, he realised what it was.

The reasons I am reliably informed, that the trial didn’t go ahead are because their witnesses of truth are liars. We were told that William had no PNC Record but that turns out not to be entirely true. Ambreen has no standing in Dalco properties so how was she letting the flat? And DC Timothy Evans, well, my dears, he is now, once again the subject of internal investigations and a malicious prosecution action which my solicitors Hughmans are bringing against him and the CPS Senior Prosecutor, directly.

They say truth prevails but this is bittersweet. It’s been a waste of time, life and resources and of course I am thrilled it is over but I really wanted to see DC Evans, Ambreen and William tie themselves up in their own lies and shenanigans. It would have been “my day in court.”

I was acquitted of all charges. That is a good feeling. It wasn’t really hard, I fell out of Kabbalah which I think is a bit of a con and into the Torah and the Old Testament with a vengeance. Prayers work, I feel closer to God than ever. I lost a good friend because emotions started to run high and something that was just a sweet romance took on greater significance than it should have but if I’ve learned one thing from all this it’s only

Don’t judge anyone for anything. It could be you next time.

A case for malicious prosecution is being filed, there is a trial on the calendar in Central London County Court for March 2010 for the theft of a second Rolex watch by DC Evans and I am assured he is being fully investigated. Complaints against the CPS are also being looked into. Time now to let it go and leave it to God.