by Sharp, Janis
Jeremy Paxman intervened to argue on my behalf much of the time but I felt frustrated as I believed that I could have held my own in this instance – but maybe everyone thinks that. My opponent was making disingenuous remarks, and Gary’s life was at stake. I was in fight mode.
In the green room afterwards I had a heated debate with the ex-CPS prosecutor and told him that extradition without evidence that could be contested in a British court was wrong and that the US does not extradite Americans for crimes committed while they were physically on US soil. Jeremy Paxman was standing leaning against the door watching us with his arms folded during the off-air debate and eventually said, ‘I almost feel sorry for this man.’
I have to say, I thought Jeremy’s sympathies were a tad misplaced, as I was a mother whose son’s life was on the line, and the prosecutor was a man who argued in court for a living.
The prosecutor looked embarrassed and, I thought, possibly even ashamed after I debated with him. I think that I might have made him realise not only the personal cost to people fighting extradition, but the cost to their families too. I also think and hope that I made him realise the unfairness of this one-sided extradition treaty we had with the US.
When I got home all the Free Gary supporters on Twitter were tweeting their anger at the ex-prosecutor and telling me ‘Well done’.
The next morning it was back to racking my brains trying to think of what else I could do. I had written many times over to every MP in all three main parties and to the Prime Minister and to Barack Obama. I needed to do something else to raise the profile of Gary’s case even further.
I began to stay up writing to politicians until 2 a.m. and would go to bed and then wake up at 5 a.m. with my mind racing and thinking of what else I could do. I researched other cases where extradition had been refused and studied extradition law.
I’ve always believed that knowledge is power and I hoped that the pen really was mightier than the sword.
• • •
When I went over to see Gary, he looked stiff and withdrawn. His teeth were clenched, his hands were held in fists and he was in robotic mode. I could see the absolute tightness of his mind and body. He wouldn’t answer the phone and was angry that anyone was ringing him. He didn’t want to speak or to see anyone and although I could usually bring Gary round to a point, he was slipping further and further away. He once told me that when he was very stressed, he felt physically tiny and everything and everyone around him was far away until he actually became like a dot in the room.
I put my arms around him but his body stiffened. I was trying to bring him round and to keep him here but he was trying to stay inside himself, in a place where no one could reach him. He was rigid and the veins in his neck were straining. I could see his eyes were full. I didn’t know if he was about to lose control or to collapse in a heap on the floor but I had no intention of leaving him, that was for sure.
Gary was fading before our eyes and the terror that he might take his own life was ever-present. We were living on a knife-edge with no respite.
I couldn’t relax as I had to stay on top of everything. I was playing chess with the grand masters, people in power who’d had years to learn what I was trying to learn in record time, but come hell or high water I was going to do it. There was no choice.
There were times I’d lie in bed feeling helpless but then suddenly I would feel this power surging inside me and I felt strong and knew I could do it.
I knew I had to make it bigger than just me.
We’re musicians, and if I could get famous musicians to help us they could get the attention of the most powerful people in the world. Musicians are known for fighting for just causes.
An old friend, John Davies, was a neighbour of David Gilmour of Pink Floyd and also knew him socially so I contacted John and he agreed to pass on a letter to David.
Then, out of the blue, I suddenly remembered that when we’d met our old friend Joe Winnington years ago in Muswell Hill, Joe had said, ‘Guess what? My sister Polly has just got married to David Gilmour.’
‘Wow!’ we said. ‘How amazing.’
Wilson and I had married in Wood Green with the music of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon playing during the ceremony. I had also read that David Cameron’s favourite album was Dark Side of the Moon, so this was all sounding promising and everyone knows that David Gilmour is a really good man.
This was almost too good to be true, plus Joe had known Gary since he was six years old! This had to be another stroke of destiny.
I sat down and wrote a letter to David Gilmour explaining Gary’s situation, and I wrote to Joe, who we hadn’t seen in years. Joe rang us as soon as he got my letter, telling me they had been following the case but that he had no idea that it was the same Gary he had known as a child as he hadn’t seen us for years.
I decided that if we could get a song to President Obama from people in David Gilmour’s league that the President would at least be made aware of Gary’s plight – and then, surely, he would help us.
Graham Nash gave me permission to slightly change the lyrics of his song ‘Chicago (We Can Change the World)’. This was a famous song about injustice and the Chicago Eight. As Obama cut his teeth in Chicago it would be perfect.
When Crosby, Stills & Nash were later playing the song ‘Chicago’ at Glastonbury, Graham Nash got a rapturous response from the audience when he spoke about and championed Gary during their set. He also did interviews in support of Gary and said:
I think the US government are being heavy handed.
If you open the Pandora’s Box of the digital world you’d better watch out what happens. You’ve got no control. The toothpaste is out of the tube and you can’t get it back in.
You have this autistic guy sitting in his apartment in London tapping away, looking for UFOs and flying saucers.
I fear they’ll throw Gary into a US jail and we’ll never hear about him again. If we bring enough attention to the case, they’ll have to give it up.
It’s a preposterous situation so I say f*** them – I want to help Gary.
Our friend James Litherland, a great musician who’s played with the best, added his acoustic guitar and vocals to a backing track that Wilson had recorded, and Jim also arranged for gospel singers he knows to add their vocals to the track.
On 23 July 2009 we emailed the backing track of ‘Chicago’ to David Gilmour, who was in the midst of leaving to go on holiday with his family. Unbelievably, David took the time to add his vocal then and there. I can never repay him for that.
I decided to write to Bob Geldof and to follow up my letter with phone calls to his office asking him to add his vocals to the track. It was so hard for me to do this as I avoid the phone whenever possible – for some reason, whenever it rings it makes me jump. It was also incredibly hard to get any response from Bob Geldof ’s office, but I hassled them continuously and eventually he obliged, adding so much to the track.
Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders also came on board, which was amazing. Being American it was courageous of Chrissie to do this for Gary, and huge respect to her for that.
Sir Paul McCartney also agreed to add his voice, as did Dennis Locorriere (ex-Doctor Hook), and Skin from Skunk Anansie. However, by then the boat that David Gilmour’s Astoria Studio was on needed its hull rebuilt, unfortunately preventing further recording from taking place.
The Orb also did an excellent version of the song which is featured on their Metallic Spheres album, which David Gilmour plays guitar on. David and The Orb’s Alex Paterson donated royalties from it to help fund all aspects of Gary’s campaign and for his psychiatric treatment (e.g. to the Maudsley NHS Trust and also for his current ongoing therapy with Professor van Deurzen).
We also arranged for part of the royalties from the song to go to human rights organisations such as Liberty, and autism charities such as the National Autistic Society, ART and Research Autism.
We can never repay David Gilmour and Alex
Paterson for all they have done for our family when we were at the lowest point.
David and his manager Paul Loasby arranged for the song to be recorded and filmed in RAK Studios in St John’s Wood and, knowing that Gary was also a musician, they asked Gary to add his voice, which he did.
The entire day in the studio was incredibly well organised and Paul Loasby ensured that interviews could take place in comfortable surroundings, with TV crews placed in unobtrusive positions that didn’t crowd Gary at all.
It was strange being in RAK again, as this was the very studio Wilson and I were in many years before when we were offered a record deal that we foolishly lost by not signing with the manager who arranged the deal. Our lives were becoming more surreal by the day.
Gary wore a plain grey shirt and on the way to the studio I was looking at shops we drove past in the hope of finding him something special to wear, as the recording would be filmed. I got Wilson to stop the car at the one and only shop that looked the least bit promising. All of the clothes were underwhelming and extremely overpriced. Gary didn’t want anything that would make him look dressed up, so I chose the only T-shirt I could find that looked good.
When we got to the studio there was nowhere to park so Gary and I went in ahead while Wilson drove around for ages looking for a parking space.
As soon as we saw Chrissie Hynde with her Animal Liberation T-shirt we were at our ease. I told Chrissie that I’d been a vegetarian since I was nineteen years old and Gary had been a vegetarian for his entire life, and Chrissie said with a smile, ‘I knew I was backing the right people.’
Chrissie Hynde is shy but she was amazing with Gary and took the time to speak to him and to put him at his ease. She was lovely.
Gary was nervous. He didn’t wear the T-shirt I’d bought and initially stood so still that he seemed almost frozen. He barely moved during the recording but his rich, deep voice added so much to the song and it was good to see Gary playing the piano again, even if only very briefly.
The studio had allowed some TV stations to attend the session – including Russian, German and American ones – and we did interviews with them all. I was worried about doing one with CNN in case of bias, but the interview was a fair one.
I’ll be forever grateful to David Gilmour and Polly for all they’ve done for us; and to Paul Loasby for his first-class organisation of the event; and to Joe, a dear friend who came through for us in our time of need, despite not having seen us for years.
We got home and switched on the TV and there it was, ‘Chicago’, the song in all its glory. What was wonderful and totally unexpected was that Chrissie Hynde and David Gilmour – who rarely give interviews – did so in support of Gary.
We were watching and listening intently as David said:
No one on the side of officialdom seems to be doing very much to help this chap Gary. He’s being done by a law that was put into place for terrorism post-9/11, and this guy just isn’t a terrorist. You know it’s mad to sort of treat him as if he’s a fully blown terrorist sort of chap. He’s just a simple guy who’s taken things a little bit too far and we should just let our own justice system here in England deal with him in whatever way they see fit. He doesn’t need to be carted off to America to face the sort of sentences that have been bandied about in the press.
The song was aired on TV stations throughout the world and people could donate whatever they could afford to download the song. It was produced by Chris Thomas and, in another coincidence, a young Gary had helped to look after Chris Thomas’s two children at summer camp. When Warner Bros offered us the record deal that we didn’t sign in the end, Chris Thomas was their chosen producer.
After Gary’s arrest every waking moment was spent trying to make sure he’d be safe. I hadn’t written a song for ages, but when I was finding it hard to cope I’d turn the music in the car up really loud and get lost in it. Music was my therapy.
CHAPTER 15
LICENSED TO KILL
On 25 July 2009 I looked through the morning papers and read that the Labour MP Andrew MacKinlay had resigned and was going to stand down at the next election because of Gary. He believed extradition could and should be refused by our government, and what was happening to Gary was the final straw for him.
Now, when a man stands up and is willing to throw his career to the wall to help another human being, you know that man is a good man. It can never be taken with a pinch of salt when a career is ended on principle and few have the courage to make their mark by doing something so spectacularly selfless.
Totally out of the blue, things kept coming up for us. Searching through the papers I saw that Gordon Brown had spoken out for Gary and expressed sympathy for what was happening to him. This was good and, as Nicky Campbell said when he interviewed me on his BBC 5 Live radio show, Gordon Brown was the Prime Minister, he could refuse to extradite if he wanted to.
We were hopeful but I knew that, for whatever reason, our government are afraid of upsetting the US, whereas the US are not even the tiniest bit afraid of upsetting our government.
On 31 July we arrived again at the Royal Courts of Justice to hear the decision on Gary’s judicial review. The streets outside were thronging with press and TV crews from all over the world. This exceeded even the huge media presence we were now used to.
Wilson and I sat down in court; Gary was at home with Lucy. The clerk of the courts appeared and said, ‘All rise.’
We all rose, as Justice Stanley Burnton and Justice Wilkie made their entrance and took up their positions on their dais, overlooking those assembled below. Despite the judges having seemed to be on side at the hearing, I knew inside that they were going to rule against Gary, and they did.
Instead of crying I felt angry for having been taken in by their sympathetic approach at the previous hearing.
The court atmosphere was electrifying as journalists hurried out to ring their editors and the world’s media were clamouring for interviews. I walked out of the court in defiant mood and, in front of hundreds of TV cameras, preached the injustice of this iniquitous extradition treaty that had never been intended to be used against someone like Gary. The prosecutors may have believed they had won but the mood of the country was against them and morally they had lost.
I was giving endless interviews and felt like a piece of rope in a tug of war.
‘This way, Janis … no, over here, Janis … look up … look down … our crew are just across the road … come this way … no, we’re next, our satellite van is just here … no, we’re next…’
And then I heard Melanie Riley’s voice. ‘Do you want some help, Janis?’
‘Yes please, Melanie,’ and she got the media to line up, told them whose turn was next and whipped everything into shape. The relief I felt was incredible.
The last interview I did was with Keir Simmons from ITV’s News at Ten. Keir could see I was waning, so he hired rooms at the Waldorf Hotel, just yards away, and ordered tea, coffee, scones, sandwiches, cakes, drinks and even lunch if I wanted. It was so good to just sit down and to have tea and something to eat in this quieter atmosphere.
Keir had the computer switched on; he called me over and said, ‘Look. Gary is trending worldwide on Twitter. Out of everyone in the entire world, Gary is leading and is the number one trend on Twitter.’
• • •
A few days later, Keir and his colleague proposed the idea of flying me over to Washington to raise Gary’s case at the White House. I realised that meeting with influential people in the US and doing interviews there might help Gary, but I was worried it could become a media circus which might backfire on us.
When I told Gary about it he said, ‘No! Don’t go! They’ll blow the plane up, they’ll kill you; you can’t go.’
Our lives were so surreal that virtually nothing would surprise me. I decided not to go, which made Gary happy.
The following week yet another offer of help appeared. This time it was from an Edinburgh-based Scots entrepr
eneur named Luke Heron, who said that if America’s biggest problem was Gary supposedly having caused damage of around $700,000 (£470,000), he would write a cheque for that amount there and then, if it would end the matter.
Lord Popat also offered to help us, which was incredibly kind of him. Lord Popat is a Conservative life peer, born in Uganda, who immigrated to the UK at the age of seventeen with only £10 in his pocket.
In September 2009 Karen submitted an appeal to the newly opened British Supreme Court. This really was Gary’s last hope.
In a bid to garner further political support, with the help of Matthew Downie from the National Autistic Society I attended all three party conferences and Matthew and his colleague accompanied me. We met with Chris Huhne at the Lib Dem conference in Bournemouth on 19 September, a beautiful sunny day. Chris Huhne had joined with David Davis and Michael Meacher just ten days earlier to form a cross-party delegation to persuade the Home Secretary to refuse extradition – unfortunately to no avail.
What was striking about the Lib Dem party conference was that there was no security and you could wander around more or less wherever you wanted to. The conference was held in the historic Highcliff Hotel, situated above the promenade. The relaxed atmosphere made it feel almost like being on holiday as we sat out on the terrace overlooking the sea and, just for a minute, I could become lost in the dramatic views across the channel.
It seemed odd to think that a decision that changed history was taken by politicians in this same hotel, overlooking this same seascape, in May 1940, at a time when German troops were pouring into Holland and Belgium.
Labour met at the Highcliff Hotel for its first conference of the Second World War and the committee voted unanimously that Labour would not serve under Chamberlain. That decision led to Neville Chamberlain resigning and recommending Winston Churchill, who was then appointed Prime Minister by King George VI.