An appeal from Leeds Anarchist Black Cross on behalf of John Bowden:
Edinburgh Criminal Justice Services, or what used to be known as the plain Social Work Department, have seriously compromised their professional integrity by defending a member of staff who deliberately told lies in a report to the Parole Boards in an attempt to sabotage my chances of release from prison. Behaving like corrupt policemen instead of traditional social workers seems now to be acceptable practice at Edinburgh Social Services.
In an official report for the Parole Board, written on 29/2/2012 Brendan Barnett, who works for Edinburgh Criminal Justice Services, made the following incredible claims about my original case in 1980:
“Secondary motives for using violence described by the trial judge and acknowledged by Bowden himself suggest a pattern of behaviour that allowed for the predatory targeting of vulnerable human beings on the margins of society defined by race or sexuality.”
“Bowden has suggested that his victims were easily discriminated against on the basis of race and sexuality.”
“There has been no investigation of the values and beliefs that informed Bowden’s targeting of individuals, i.e. what particular characteristics deemed a person worthy of attack: ethnic background, deviant sexuality.”
There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever to support Barnett’s bizarre claims, and in fact I was convicted in 1982, alongside two other men, of the murder of a white Caucasian heterosexual male during a drunken party in South London.
In an official report for the Parole Board, written on 29/2/2012 Brendan Barnett, who works for Edinburgh Criminal Justice Services, made the following incredible claims about my original case in 1980:
“Secondary motives for using violence described by the trial judge and acknowledged by Bowden himself suggest a pattern of behaviour that allowed for the predatory targeting of vulnerable human beings on the margins of society defined by race or sexuality.”
“Bowden has suggested that his victims were easily discriminated against on the basis of race and sexuality.”
“There has been no investigation of the values and beliefs that informed Bowden’s targeting of individuals, i.e. what particular characteristics deemed a person worthy of attack: ethnic background, deviant sexuality.”
There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever to support Barnett’s bizarre claims, and in fact I was convicted in 1982, alongside two other men, of the murder of a white Caucasian heterosexual male during a drunken party in South London.
