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The Panos Koupparis Cover-Up
By Simon Regan Scallywag Magazine Issue 25 |
Classic Miscarriages of Justice
Illustration by Reeve
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Drugs, Denials and Desperation in the DockIn 1987 the office of the president of Cyprus received a 13-page letter which was patently from a person who was mentally deranged. It was signed by a 'Commander Nemo', titled April Fool's Day and, among many other things, it threatened to release huge quantities of "Di-Tox-B7" (which does not exist) if the President did not send $15 million for collection at the Cyprus High Commission in London. Amazingly, the Cypriots took it seriously and alerted British Intelligence. The letter went on to threaten other such incredible things as nuclear powered contact lenses, cures for AIDS, baldness and traffic congestion; magic mirrors; and how to have sex with a donkey. The letter was so blatantly barmy that it seems amazing MI5 should have even considered it. Yet they did - and subsequently unleashed a series of trials and appeals that cost our government millions.BerserkThe perpetrator, Panos Koupparis, was first arrested on April 17, 1987, when, on a family visit to Cornwall, it was alleged he had gone berserk with a carving knife - threatening a drunken rugby team - and then driven his car into a shop front. The local police assumed he was drunk, but tests proved later he was not. It was then learned that the anti-terrorist squad in London had a 'red alert' out for him.That night he was examined by a police doctor who decided he was insane. Despite this, the police released him on bail. Eventually, for these offences, he was committed for trial. On May 14th, however, he was arrested by the anti-terrorist squad on charges of "international blackmail". So was his wife, his two brothers, his chauffeur and his sister-in-law in Cyprus. All of these were later released for lack of evidence. QuackAt the time, Koupparis was a well-off British citizen, resident in Cyprus, who had come to London for medical reasons. It quickly emerged he had been subject to treatment by a Dr. P Sophocleous who, soon after treating Koupparis, had been struck off the medical register for being a "bogus, mentally-ill charlatan who had regularly prescribed overdoses of the wrong drug for the wrong ailment and then changed his records." Among other things, Sophocleous had prescribed five times the correct dose of two potent and dangerous drugs called Xanax and Halcion, both of which had been banned in the UK after it was found they could induce dangerous psychoses. Apart from his severe change in behaviour patterns after taking a course of these drugs, all Koupparis's medical records until that time confirmed he was entirely sane.Indeed, later on, when lawyers decided he was "unfit to plead" because of insanity, he had just sat an exam in prison and passed an 'A' level in English. Several records were to show quite categorically he had been sane both before and after the events in Cornwall. But these records have been continually suppressed or denied from three court hearings and two appeals. So was the direct evidence of the fact that he had been given ridiculously large doses of drugs which would have shown he had been subject to an 'involuntary, drug-induced psychosis' and after which any prosecution would have automatically been thrown out of court. Banged UpKoupparis eventually spent seven years in prison. Why? Either someone somewhere needed to cover his backside, or the law of England is a complete, incompetent and hopeless arse, desperately in need of reform.Much of Koupparis's case hinges on the so-called "McNaughton Rules" (named because of a judge's delightful simplification of English Common Law). They go thus: "Would he (Koupparis) have acted in the same way if a policeman had been standing next to him?" Of course he would have. Poor Panos hadn't the foggiest idea what he was doing either when he bandied the knife around, or when he tried so hopelessly and pathetically to "blackmail" his own government. Yet a medley of different solicitors and Queen's Counsel did this man wrong, to say nothing of the judges who kept deciding that clearly admissible evidence of Koupparis's drug-affected state of mind was inadmissible. Even friends in the legal profession, willing and able to stand up and provide evidence that their man had an absolute defence which could not be faulted were consistently rejected, or not produced in court, even by defence lawyers. The later report to the Royal Commission used the word 'repressed'. But why, and by whom? Evidence IgnoredThe medical evidence on wrongly prescribed drugs came from his former doctor in Cyprus. Neither side, prosecution or defence, ever used it, despite the fact that the Koupparis family had gone to great lengths to make it available. Several times when Koupparis himself tried to introduce it from the dock, the judge forbade him to do so. Instead, the court was only informed officially of the original police station report which pronounced him insane.Why, for example, was the following statement from Professor Ian Oswald, an eminent psychiatrist and head of faculty of Edinburgh University, and who had perused the full medical reports, never available to any of the court hearings? "I advise that additional evidence, not available at the time of his trial, confirms that his bizarre conduct in early 1987 should be regarded as attributable to the drug Halcion that he was taking on prescription. I am entirely satisfied that Halcion would, in the dosage used and for the time used, have been likely to cause the mental disorder and hostility manifest in the behaviour of Mr Koupparis in 1987." FramedEven worse, experts independently charged that tapes of conversations between the police and Koupparis had been tampered with to specifically eliminate all references to Halcion. Yet this expert testimony was judged inadmissible. "The police" in this case were Special Branch. Why should they go to such lengths to pervert the course of justice against an unknown and harmless Cypriot and remain so determined he should remain in prison for seven long years?The whole case eventually involved intense investigations by two police forces, one committal, hearing, three trials, the involvement of more than 30 doctors, at least 12 barristers and four Queen's Counsel, ten firms of solicitors, three high-court judges and dozens of people acting for the co-defendants - all over an insane letter which had been dispatched while the writer had been clearly unable to control his own logic. Lost FilesKoupparis went from jail to jail, police cell to police cell, appeal to appeal, asylum to asylum. But there was worse to come! Mysteriously, everyone lost all his files. They simply disappeared. From hospitals. Doctors surgeries. Solicitors offices. Police stations. Courts. Transcripts. Reports. Evidence to show that transcripts of telephone calls he had made had been tampered with; that witnesses had been hijacked; evidence clearly suppressed; reports on the mysterious deaths of several of his own witnesses. It had all gone, even from the safes of well-wishers, and could not be found as Koupparis languished in yet another jail protesting his innocence.Why? Maybe there is a small clue in the testimony of the then High Commissioner for Cyprus, Mr Tassos Panayides, who gave evidence for the prosecution which did not tally, even vaguely with the police's official version of events. The report on which we base this story relates: "trial notes identify specific areas of untruthful testimony ... inconsistent with the known facts." What was HE up to? What were they all playing at? Why was it so very important to discredit Koupparis? He hasn't the faintest idea. Where does anyone go from here? After seven long years of incarceration Koupparis is a ruined shell of a man who cannot go back to Cyprus because he would probably be arrested again on the same charges. His life is in ruins either out of incompetence or, more likely, some conspiracy he does not understand. Only the lawyers ride high. It is a dreadful miscarriage of justice and there are a lot of people out there who should not sleep easy at nights.
This article is based on Fools' Justice: A Report for the Royal Commission on Criminal Justice: November, 1991. |
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