Oliver Campbell: Brain-damaged man appeals against murder conviction more than 30 years after being jailed

Published

8 months ago

February 28, 2024

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A brain-damaged man jailed for life as a teenager will tell the appeal court today he was pressed by police into making a false murder confession.

Troubled Oliver Campbell, now 53, was interviewed without a lawyer after his arrest for a fatal shooting during an off-licence robbery in 1990.

He was convicted of murder and robbery, while a friend, Eric Samuels, was found guilty of just the robbery.

Campbell’s lawyers claim his trial jury was not told the full extent of his mental health issues, nor did it hear evidence that another man had been named as the gunman.

On the eve of his appeal Campbell, who is free on licence, said: “If I win the choke chain that’s been around my neck for 33 years will come off, but I’m not free yet.

“I’m still a prisoner of the criminal justice system, still under the Home Office because they can recall me to prison any time.”

He’s a good-natured soul who smiles a lot, is quick to crack jokes and curses his police interrogators in a largely non-offensive manner.

I asked him why he had confessed to detectives who took him in for questioning. He said: “I was under police pressure, under duress. It was like someone putting you in a room and there’s no way out of it. I felt vulnerable, 100%.”

“If they had done their homework they would have realised I was wrongly arrested, wrongly convicted and wrongly jailed.”

His legal team say: “Oliver suffered severe brain damage as a baby. His intelligence is borderline defective with an impaired capacity to process or remember more than the simplest verbal information, severely restricted reasoning skills and poor concentration and memory.”

Part of the evidence against Campbell was his hat, found at the scene, which he admitted was his, but had been taken off him by someone several days before the robbery. The hat contained hairs, but none of them was Campbell’s.

Confession under duress

His lawyers said: “His admissions to police were the main evidence against him. He was said to have made remarks on arrest and en route to the police station showing some knowledge of the murder.

“He arrived at 7.50am and at 8.02am signed the custody record to confirm that he did not want a solicitor or anyone informed of his arrest.

“In a taped interview in the absence of a solicitor or an appropriate adult he first denied involvement but then admitted that he had been the unarmed robber.

“However, the admissions were made in response to a quite misleading suggestion from the interviewing officer that he had dropped the hat in the shop – a suggestion to which he agreed.”

They added: “The detectives were plainly convinced that, since Oliver was the owner of the hat, he must have been the shooter and they were determined to get him to admit that fact.

“They deliberately and falsely exaggerated the strength of the case against him and rang the changes between suggesting that the shooting could only have been deliberate and insinuating that it might have been an accident.”

The gunman was said to be right-handed, while Campbell is left-handed.

Campbell was jailed in December, 1991, for the murder of Baldev Hoondle, who was shot in the back of the head as he struggled with one of two robbers at his off-licence in Hackney, east London.

He was freed on licence in 2002 and continues to live under restrictions that mean he needs permission to get a job and is prevented from travelling abroad.

He said: “Whatever happened in the past, they can’t bring it back. The person who did the crime is still out there and the shopkeeper’s friends and family have not had justice.”

He lost his first appeal, had a second application for appeal turned down by the Criminal Cases Review Commission, but recently persuaded the CCRC he did have a good case, which is being heard this week.

His lawyers said: “We can’t give Oliver back 30 lost years. But hopefully we can persuade the court at long last to recognise the injustice done to him.”

UK

Sara Sharif: 10-year-old’s stepmother said girl’s father beat her up ‘like crazy’, according to WhatsApp messages read in court

Published

2 hours ago

November 1, 2024

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Sara Sharif: 10-year-old's stepmother said girl's father beat her up 'like crazy', according to WhatsApp messages read in court

Sara Sharif’s stepmother sent her sister some pictures of the 10-year-old looking bruised and miserable – and told her to “delete” them, a court has heard.

“Look what he’s doing,” Beinash Batool told Qandeela Saboohi, referring to the beatings Sara was allegedly getting from her father, Urfan Sharif.

“Delete the pictures.”

A series of WhatsApp messages exchanged between 2020 and 2023, in which Batool told her sister about the physical attacks Sharif was allegedly inflicting on his daughter, were read out to a jury at the Old Bailey.

Batool repeatedly told her sister that Sharif was hitting Sara for being “naughty”, “rude and rebellious”, and because she had cut up his clothes, hidden keys and torn up documents.

Batool, 30, Urfan Sharif, 42, and Sara’s uncle, 29-year-old Faisal Malik, are accused of carrying out a campaign of abuse culminating in Sara’s murder on 8 August last year.

As early as February 2020, Batool described Sharif as going on a “rampage” after spilling hot tea, saying he was “possessed”.

Writing about 10 photographs of Sara, she wrote: “This is how bad he is beating her… I feel really sorry for her. He beat the crap out of her.”

On another occasion, Batool said Sharif “went ballistic” and “beat Sara up like crazy”. She expressed fears he could break an arm or leg.

In May 2021, Batool told Ms Saboohi: “Not great in our house, it’s all a bit manic. Urfan beat the crap out of Sara and my mind is all in bits. I really want to report him.

“Why the hell doesn’t Urfan learn – she’s covered in bruises, literally beaten black.”

Afterwards, Sharif sat “on his fat bum” and played the board game Ludo, she said.

She went on: “Why the hell I’m even letting him in the house. I’m sorry for Sara, poor girl cannot walk. She literally fainted in the kitchen in the morning. He made her do sit-ups all night.”

Asked what Sara had done, Batool said: “Because she hid the keys.”

By 2022, Batool said she was planning to get some “legal advice” but was advised by her sister to give it time and not to rush.

In an update later that year, Batool said she was thinking about taking Sara out of school, saying: “I don’t want to but kinda don’t have a choice.

“I’m just fed up of her behaviour and Urfan’s. Sara’s body is literally bruised because Urfan beat her up. I cannot even cover it up.

“He beat Sara up yesterday and I can’t send her to school on Monday looking like that.

“She ripped Urfan’s documents in front of him and was being rude and rebellious.”

Referring to an image of Sara in a hijab, Batool wrote: “You haven’t even seen her body, it’s a whole lot worse.”

Days later, she said Sara’s school was worried about her and Sharif was “stressed” about it.

In an apparent reference to Sara’s injuries, she wrote: “Urfan told me to cover it up with makeup and she’s going to wear sunglasses.”

Two months before Sara died, Batool referred to “Sara’s antics”, telling her sister: “Urfan beat the crap out of Sara… Yeah, he beat her up like crazy.

“Her oxygen level dropped really low, she’s finding it hard to stay awake.”

Asked if Sharif had hit her on the head, Batool said: “Nah, but she’s breathing really rapidly.”

The day before Sara died, Ms Saboohi tried to make contact but Batool told her she was “not in the mood to speak”.

Two days later, the defendants were captured on CCTV as they prepared to board a flight to Pakistan from Heathrow Airport.

That CCTV has now been shown to the jury.

On 10 August last year, police found Sara’s body in a bunkbed after Sharif called from Pakistan to say he had beaten her up “too much” for “being naughty”.

William Emlyn Jones KC, the prosecutor, has previously told jurors it was disputed whether messages Batool sent to two of her sisters were accurate or gave a full picture.

All three defendants, formerly of Hammond Road in Woking in Berkshire, have denied murder and causing or allowing the death of a child between 16 December 2022 and 9 August 2023.

The trial continues.

UK

Budget: Hostile market response as chancellor suffers Halloween nightmare

Published

8 hours ago

October 31, 2024

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Budget: Hostile market response as chancellor suffers Halloween nightmare

First things first: don’t panic.

What you need to know is this. The budget has not gone down well in financial markets. Indeed, it’s gone down about as badly as any budget in recent years, save for Liz Truss’s mini-budget.

The pound is weaker. Government bond yields (essentially, the interest rate the exchequer pays on its debt) have gone up.

That’s precisely the opposite market reaction to the one chancellors like to see after they commend their fiscal statements to the house.

In hindsight, perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised.

After all, the new government just committed itself to considerably more borrowing than its predecessors – about £140bn more borrowing in the coming years. And that money has to be borrowed from someone – namely, financial markets.

But those financial markets are now reassessing how keen they are to lend to the UK.

The upshot is that the pound has fallen quite sharply (the biggest two-day fall in trade-weighted sterling in 18 months) and gilt yields – the interest rate paid by the government – have risen quite sharply.

This was all beginning to crystallise shortly after the budget speech, with yields beginning to rise and the pound beginning to weaken, the moment investors and economists got their hands on the budget documentation.

But the falls in the pound and the rises in the bond yields accelerated today.

This is not, to be absolutely clear, the kind of response any chancellor wants to see after a budget – let alone their first budget in office.

Indeed, I can’t remember another budget which saw as hostile a market response as this one in many years – save for one.

That exception is, of course, the Liz Truss/Kwasi Kwarteng mini-budget of 2022. And here is where you’ll find the silver lining for Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves.

The rises in gilt yields and falls in sterling in recent hours and days are still far shy of what took place in the run up and aftermath of the mini-budget. This does not yet feel like a crisis moment for UK markets.

But nor is it anything like good news for the government. In fact, it’s pretty awful. Because higher borrowing rates for UK debt mean it (well, us) will end up paying considerably more to service our debt in the coming years.

And that debt is about to balloon dramatically because of the plans laid down by the chancellor this week.

And this is where things get particularly sticky for Ms Reeves.

In that budget documentation, the Office for Budget Responsibility said the chancellor could afford to see those gilt yields rise by about 1.3 percentage points, but then when they exceeded this level, the so-called “headroom” she had against her fiscal rules would evaporate.

In other words, she’d break those rules – which, recall, are considerably less strict than the ones she inherited from Jeremy Hunt.

Which raises the question: where are those gilt yields right now? How close are they to the danger zone where the chancellor ends up breaking her rules?

Short answer: worryingly close. Because, right now, the yield on five-year government debt (which is the maturity the OBR focuses on most) is more than halfway towards that danger zone – only 56 basis points away from hitting the point where debt interest costs eat up any leeway the chancellor has to avoid breaking her rules.

Now, we are not in crisis territory yet. Nor can every move in currencies and bonds be attributed to this budget.

Markets are volatile right now. There’s lots going on: a US election next week and a Bank of England decision on interest rates next week.

The chancellor could get lucky. Gilt yields could settle in the coming days. But, right now, the UK, with its high level of public and private debt, with its new government which has just pledged to borrow many billions more in the coming years, is being closely scrutinised by the “bond vigilantes”.

A Halloween nightmare for any chancellor.