John Bowden

From BinaryFreedom.INFO

Contents 1 Who Is John Bowden 2 What you can do 2.1 Write to Bowden 2.2 Contact your British Consulate 2.3 Contact The British Embassy 2.4 Write the Scottish Prison Authority 2.5 Hands off Bowden 3 Statements from John Bowden

[edit] Who Is John Bowden

John Bowden has been in prison for over 25 years in Scotland. He was charged with murder, and 25 years is a long time to be in prison regardless of the charge. He had been allowed house visits and unsupervised community service outside prison walls and hadn't posed a threat to society and upon his "parole" hearing (or the Scottish equiv.) he was denied parole. Unlike other people with the same charge, he was further imprisoned because of his political affiliations. One of the social workers prepared a report for his hearing calling him a "terrorist" for associating with the ABC (Anarchist Black Cross) which is a group with which Binary Freedom associates. They also said he has "terrorists" visit him in prison and he was immediately transferred to a maximum security prison and possibly put into solitary confinement. He has now become a political prisoner and is only still in prison for his affiliation with the Anarchist Black Cross (in particular, the support he received from them and the writing he did for their website). When the right to freely associate is openly attacked, we must defend it because our organization relies on this right. As John's situation is getting more serious, condemned to be involved in "terrorist organization", he understands that without international pressure, he will not be released. The prison authority ignored all the questions he made over the issue of his continuing solitary confinement. He is asking everyone to enquire about his situation, whether he can receive mail, stamps and money, when he is going to be released. Sending emails and faxes to the authority give them more paper work and response to do, make them realize the consequence of their decision on his treatment.

Showing them that there are people outside of the prison and the UK who are concerned about him and watching for injustice, would prevent John Bowden from being further victimized.

[edit] What you can do

[edit] Write to Bowden

Also, don't forget to send John a card or letter to support him in his struggle for freedom.

John Bowden, 6729, HMP Glenochil, King O' Muir Road, Tullibody, Clackmannanshire, FK10 3AD Scotland

[edit] Contact your British Consulate

Protest, phone, fax, and email! Orlando:
Suite 2110, Sun Trust Center
200 South Orange Avenue
Orlando, FL 32801
Tel: (407) 254-3300 | Fax: (407) 254-3333
natalie.pawelski@fco.gov.uk
annette.hugues@fco.gov.uk

Miami:
Brickell Bay Office Tower
1001 Brickell Bay Drive
Suite 2800
Miami, FL 33131
Tel: (305) 374 1522 | Fax: (305) 374 8196
annette.hugues@fco.gov.uk
natalie.pawelski@fco.gov.uk

Denver:
Suite 1030
World Trade Center
1675 Broadway
Denver, CO 80202
Tel: (303) 592 5200 | Fax: (303) 592 5209
Rebecca Carlson: (303) 592-5212
Vice Consul: Mitch Jeffrey (713) 659 6275 x 17
Assistant: Tracy Achilles (713) 659 6270 ext. 2118
bcghou@aol.com
Fax: (713) 659 7094

San Francisco:
1 Sansome Street
Suite 850
San Francisco, CA 94104
Tel: (415) 617 1300 | Fax: (415) 434 2018
Vice Consul: Jacqui Graham
Consular Assistant: Jennifer Baker
Telephone: (415) 617 1330
Fax: (415) 434 2018
E-Mail: consular.sf@fco.gov.uk
For public enquiries, call 1 (900) 255 6685 or 1 (800) 443 8882
Contacts for the Political, Press & Public Affairs Section:
Vice Consul PPPA: Robin Newmann (415) 617 1340
Deputy Head PPPA: Emma-Louise Anderson (415) 617 1378
PPPA Assistant: Lesley Hughlett (415) 617 1341

New York:
845 Third Avenue
New York, NY 10022
Tel: (212) 745-0200 | Fax: (212) 754-3062
Press & Public Affairs Officer: Leslie Slocum
Tel: (212) 745-0258
Fax: (212) 758-5395
Email: Leslie.Slocum@fco.gov.uk

Los Angeles,
British Consulate-General, Los Angeles
11766 Wilshire Blvd, Suite 1200
Los Angeles, CA 90025-6538
Main Tel: (310) 481-0031
Main Fax: (310) 481-2960
HM Consul: Jeff Mee
Vice-Consul: Barbara Morgan - (310) 481-2925
Pro Consul: Caroline Beddie
Consular Assistant: Alyson Langan - (310) 481-2908
For general e-mail inquiries: visas.losangeles@fco.gov.uk
Amy Exelby
Vice Consul - Political, Press & Public Affairs
(310) 996 3028
Rebekah Rodriguez-Lynn
Assistant PP&PA Officer, Marshall Scholarships
(310) 996 3038
E-mail: pppa@britishconsulatela.com


Houston:
Wells Fargo Plaza
19th Floor
1000 Louisiana, Suite 1900
Houston, TX 77002
Tel: (713) 659 6270 | Fax: (713) 659 7094
Vice Consul: Mitch Jeffrey (713) 659 6275 x 2117
Assistant: Tracy Harris (713) 659 6275 x 2118
E-mail: bcghou@aol.com
Fax: (713) 659 7094

Chicago:
13th Floor
The Wrigley Building
400 N Michigan Avenue
Chicago, IL 60611
Tel: (312) 970-3800 | Fax: (312) 970-3852
Contact the Consular Section in Chicago at:
Telephone (312) 970-3800
E-mail: BCGChicago@fco.gov.uk
PPAChicago@fco.gov.uk

Boston:
One Memorial Drive
Suite 1500
Cambridge, MA 02142
Tel: 617 245 4500 | Fax: 617 621 0220
Vice Consul: Jacqueline Greenlaw
Telephone: (617) 245 4500
Fax: (617) 621 0220
E-Mail: british.boston@fco.gov.uk
Vice Consul, Press and Public Affairs: Joseph Pickerill [Bio]
Telephone: (617) 245 4513
Deputy Press and Public Affairs Officer: Melissa Murphy
Telephone: (617) 245 4512
Assistant Visits, Press and Public Affairs Officer: Mary Beth Weinberger
Telephone: (617) 245 4525
Fax: (617) 621 0220
E-Mail: british.boston@fco.gov.uk

Atlanta
Georgia Pacific Centre
Suite 3400
133 Peachtree Street N.E.
Atlanta, GA 30303
Tel: (404) 954-7700 | Fax: (404) 954 7702
Vice Consul:
Claire Newman
claire.newman@fco.gov.uk
Tel: (404) 954-7710
Consular Assistant:
Jeff Wix
jeffrey.wix@fco.gov.uk
Tel: (404) 954-7712
Assistant Information Officer:
Kirstine Rushing (404) 954-7707
E-mail: Kirstine.Rushing@fco.gov.uk

[edit] Contact The British Embassy

3100 Massachusetts Avenue,
Washington DC,
20008
(202) 588 7800

When communicating, mention these points:

1. The Anarchist Black Cross is not a terrorist organization
2. John Bowden is now being held for purely political reasons
3. You are requesting the immediate release of John Bowden
4. "Hands off Bowden!"
5. Where you are from (City, State, Country)

[edit] Write the Scottish Prison Authority

Scottish Prison authority:

Audrey Parks,
Governor,
HMP Glenochil,

King O' Muir Road,

Tullibody,
Clackmannanshire,
FK10 3AD. Scotland

Scottish Prison Service Headquarters
Communications Branch, Room 338
Calton House, 5 Redheughs Rigg
Edinburgh, EH12 9HW. Scotland

E-mail: gaolinfo@sps.gov.uk

Tel: +44(0)1259 760471
Fax: +44(0)1259 762003

[edit] Hands off Bowden

Please send cards that say "Hands off Bowden" here:

Scottish Prison Service
Headquarters, Communications Branch, Room 338, Calton House, 5
Redheughs
Rigg, Edinburgh, EH12 9HW. Scotland
Letters in support of John's parole application and complaints about his treatment can be sent to John's solicitor:
Simon Creighton, Bhatt Murphy Solicitors, 27 Hoxton Square, London N1 6NN. England.

[edit] Statements from John Bowden

On the 18th April 2007, nine months after my transfer to Castle Huntly Open Prison, and less than a month before a critically important parole hearing to decide my suitability for release after 25 years in prison, I was placed into solitary confinement and the following day transferred back to a maximum security jail. Incredibly, I was accused of involvement with a 'terrorist organisation' on the outside, a claim emblazoned across the front page of the local Dundee Courier ('Castle Huntly killer has terror links') on the day I was locked into solitary. In the current political climate such a claim was obviously made with the deliberate intention of keeping me imprisoned indefinitely.

In fact, the claim was a lie and reveals the extent of the prison system's determination to deny me freedom even after a quarter of a century behind bars. That such a ludicrous and easily refuted lie should have resulted in my return to conditions of maximum security and the almost certain denial of parole also reveals the Kafkaesque nature of power within the police state world of the prison system. There is, however, a certain vicious rationale motivating the absurd claim made against me.

The persecution and victimisation of prisoner activists by the prison authorities is as intrinsic to the role and function of the prison system as the injustice and abuse of power that characterises its treatment of all prisoners. In the eyes of the prison system and those who enforce it, however, the most feared and hated prisoners of all are those identified as 'ringleaders' and 'subversives', prisoners who attempt to collectively organise and mobilise their fellow prisoners into resistance and protest. For these 'troublemakers' the system reserves its most vicious and vindictive treatment, and an appetite for revenge that blights the lives of such prisoners throughout their entire sentences. If the targeted 'subversive' happens to be serving a life sentence then every means will be employed, including the collusion of prison employed social workers and probation officers, to try and keep the prisoner inside until they die.

There are no civilised limits to the vindictiveness of the prison system when it comes to punishing those who have challenged and threatened its power.

For more than two decades in prison I had pursued and fought for the cause of prisoners' rights and tried with every means at my disposal to highlight and expose the frequent and often horrendous abuses of power that I had witnessed and experienced. As a consequence, my name had become synonymous in the minds of prison officials with sedition and defiance, and the spectre of something that has always frightened, enraged and driven them to use every method and means to eradicate and destroy it: prisoner power.

In January this year as I approached the end of a 25 year recommendation life sentence, the administration at Castle Huntly Open Prison were obliged to prepare reports on me for what should have been a final parole tribunal to decide my release. As part of my preparation for release, I had spent two years working unsupervised in the outside community as a volunteer on projects for the mentally ill and socially vulnerable, and had qualified as a literacy tutor for people with learning difficulties. For almost a year I had been allowed frequent home leaves. The two fundamental criteria determining a life sentence prisoner's suitability for release, the expiry of the recommended period of time served in the interests of retribution, and the absence of any risk to the public, were both sufficiently established in my case.

Of all the reports compiled on life sentence prisoners approaching final parole hearings and potential release, few are more important and influential than those written by social workers. It is the opinions and views of these supposedly impartial professionals that exert a critical influence on the deliberations of the parole board. In my case, the prison authorities chose to dispense with the services of ordinary prison social workers at Castle Huntly following an allegation that I had formed an 'inappropriately close friendship' with a member of the social work team there, and instead commissioned an outside social worker to prepare my parole report. They chose Matt Stillman, a right-wing American entrenched in punitive ideas about the role of the parole and probation system.

During two brief interviews he attempted to interrogate me about my political views and philosophy, and focused his questions almost entirely on my contact and relationship with prisoner support groups on the outside. He seemed particularly interested in my contact with the Anarchist Black Cross movement and claimed to have researched their website and read articles of mine featured on it. In Stillman's limited right-wing imagination he associated anarchism with violence and terrorism, and despite what he had actually seen and read to the contrary on the ABC website, he decided to write the following critically damning remarks in his report on me to the parole board: '.Bowden has written for a self-proclaimed anarchist website called Brighton ABC and he says he supports many of their ideas and actions. A review of this website brings into question the nature of the group. The members of this group appear to be primarily eco-terrorists or paramilitary members involved in what they see as battles against political systems and principles.'. He then adds: 'Whilst at Edinburgh prison it was reported that Bowden had received a visit from terrorists.' This refers to two members of Brighton ABC who had visited me at Edinburgh jail, neither of whom had a criminal conviction between them.

As Stillman was well aware, particularly as an American with firm right-wing opinions, levelling the accusation of 'terrorist' sympathies and associations against me in the current political climate would effectively terminate any possibility of the parole board agreeing to my release. And of course those who invited Stillman to write his report on me knew only too well that the opinions of an apparently unbiased and neutral professional would be given infinitely more weight by the parole board than those offered by conceivably prejudiced prison staff. The social work unit manager at Castle Huntly, Christina Brown, despite having also reviewed the ABC website, submitted a report endorsing Stillman's views and attesting to his impartiality and professionalism.

The entire administration at Castle Huntly deliberately colluded in supporting Stillman's ludicrous report, and reacted viciously when I contacted the ABC and suggested they pursue legal action over Stillman's definition and accusation of them as 'terrorist'. On the 18th April, during the afternoon, all prisoners at Castle Huntly were locked down in their cells as I was escorted to the office of the prison's deputy governor, James McKay. He informed me that I had 'compromised the corporate reputation of the prison' by highlighting Stillman's remarks (my intention exactly!), and that my 'continuing contact with a paramilitary organisation on the outside rendered my continuing presence in an open jail unacceptable'. I was then placed into solitary confinement and the following day moved to a maximum security prison.

I had committed no offence against prison discipline at Castle Huntly, breached no prison rules and had fulfilled every bona fide criterion determining life sentence prisoners suitability for release, and yet on the basis of an obviously ludicrous allegation made by an idiotic, redneck social worker, I was swiftly entombed back in high security conditions and denied any possibility of release for the foreseeable future.

The truth is that my treatment is politically motivated and inspired by a determination to continuously punish me for having fought the system in the past and encouraging others to do so, and also by a determination to render me intellectually and politically compliant and submissive. As far as the prison system is concerned, the imperative now is not about negating any genuine risk that I might pose to the community, that stopped being an issue many years ago, but primarily about eradicating my political identity and spirit. From this point on, therefore, my continuing imprisonment is nakedly political and centres wholly on what I continue to represent to a prison system ever fearful of a politically awakened and militant prisoner movement.

John Bowden
HMP Glenochil
May 2007