Sunday Herald

THAILAND/UNITED KINGDOM: Briton in Thai jail refuses to beg for pardon

Man facing death penalty for heroin trafficking says plea to king would be admitting guilt

 A 35-year-old Briton languishing in a Bangkok jail under sentence of death for a crime he says he did not commit is planning to protest his innocence by refusing to plead for a royal pardon.

 Julian Gilbey, whose mother and sister live in Rothesay, on the Isle of Bute, is adamant he will not appeal for a pardon from the Thai king, since to do so would require him to admit his guilt.

 'Why should he say sorry for something he didn't do?' demanded Gilbey's sister Karen Cameron, who has just returned from Bangkok.

 'Julian's view is why should he go to the king and ask for a pardon when as far as he's concerned he didn't do the crime?'

 Gilbey, a former English teacher, was convicted of drug trafficking in September after being caught at Bangkok airport a year previously with 4kg of pure heroin -- a crime which carries a mandatory death sentence in Thailand. He claims that he thought he was smuggling diamonds, a much lesser offence.

 The fact that the death penalty is usually commuted to life imprisonment in the case of foreigners is of small comfort to Gilbey, who has now spent 15 months manacled in prison, much of it in the notorious jail dubbed the 'Bangkok Hilton'.

 Gilbey is still a long way from coming to terms with being locked up for a crime which he maintains he did not knowingly commit, all the more so since there is evidence not heard at the trial which his family believe could prove his innocence.

 Gilbey's 70-year-old mother has had to remortgage her house on Bute to find more than �12,000 to pay the lawyer's fees to date.

 His Thai lawyer is meanwhile preparing an appeal in which he will call for an acquittal or a retrial. He does not have high hopes of success. Retrials are virtually unheard of in Thai courts and the judge made it clear he had no time for Gilbey's version of events.

 Failing an acquittal or a retrial, the lawyer is pushing for either a reduction in sentence or for the case to be taken to the supreme court. Neither avenue looks particularly fruitful, according to Karen Cameron.

 There is another option, however: to seek a royal pardon. This was granted to Sandra Gregory, the Aberdeenshire woman who was released after serving seven years for smuggling heroin -- a charge she admitted. But to receive a pardon, one must admit to being guilty of all charges, something which Gilbey steadfastly refuses to do.

 Karen Cameron's MP, Alan Reid, has written to UK foreign secretary Jack Straw seeking his intervention. However, to date, nothing of significance has been achieved, not even the removal of Gilbey's chains.

 Reid said: 'It's the same problem that people in this country face -- if you're wrongly convicted and you maintain your innocence, you end up suffering more because you don't get granted parole. It's only if you admit guilt you can be considered for a pardon.'

 Gilbey has consistently claimed to be innocent -- as has Lesley McCulloch, from Dunoon, who is to be sentenced in an Indonesian court tomorrow after being charged with violating a tourist visa by contacting rebel leaders.

 However, Gilbey's case differs from others in that his version of events is backed up by a remarkably similar case involving Englishman John Care, who was tried in Austria on charges of smuggling heroin from Thailand to Vienna. Care offered precisely the same defence as Gilbey's: that he was tricked by a drug-trafficking gang who told him he would be transporting diamonds in return for around $1000 (�600). He was found not guilty and released.

 Care, in his statement to police at the time of his arrest last October, named Gilbey as another innocent victim of the gang who was about to smuggle drugs. The following day, police arrested Gilbey and several others at Bangkok airport, but either chose not to act on Care's information or never received it. Care is meanwhile campaigning for Gilbey's release.

 Karen Cameron returned 10 days ago from a Christmas visit to see Julian for the first time since his incarceration, full of anger at the lack of help she has received from the UK authorities in her fight to have her brother's guilty sentence overturned. 'No-one wants to do anything,' she said.

 'It's pretty grim out there, but thankfully we found him to be well,' she added. 'The prison is full of drugs. It's so easy to get hold of them. There's a lot of junkies in there but thankfully Julian's keeping himself away from all that.'

Gilbey was filmed by the BBC during Karen's visit for a documentary on the work of the UK embassy in Thailand. She said the embassy 'could not have been better' during her time in the country, although she was more scathing of the Foreign Office back home, which responds to her enquiries by saying there's not a lot that can be done to help. Fair Trials Abroad is working behind the scenes, however, in an attempt to win concessions on Gilbey's death sentence.

 She added: 'It's just a waiting game.'