Gafoor gaffe

Mr Actie declared: “Wherever you go now you’ve got people saying to you ‘he (Gafoor) shouldn’t be out, he should be staying in jail’. We’re always in a constant state of depression because it hangs over you on a daily basis. Its something you never forget, going through that.”

He added: “We were the victims of the biggest corruption miscarriage of justice in British history and they haven’t even informed us. They don’t care about us. I hope he doesn’t ever have to come into Cardiff because we don’t want to see him.”

After Lynette White’s murder, detectives investigating the case said they were hunting a white suspect (who looked exactly like Gafoor), but they later arrested the five black and mixed-race men.

A trial into allegations of police corruption collapsed in 2011, after files relating to complaints by an original defendant were said to have been destroyed, and eight former officers who denied the charges against them were acquitted.

Sadly three of the Cardiff Five have since died – Ronnie Actie in 2007, Yusef Abdullahi in 2011 and Tony Paris in 2022. In 2021, the then Chief Constable of SWP Matt Jukes said members of the Cardiff Five (as they have become known), should be recognised as victims.

A website has been set up to campaign for them, and protesters want a public inquiry into all the miscarriages of justice in South Wales in the ’80s, ’90s and 2000s. They include: The Cardiff Three (Five), The Cardiff Newsagent Three, The Darvell Brothers, Jonathan Jones (The Tooze Murders), as well as Annette Hewins.

However this shocking list does NOT have on it all those innocent people, who were convicted of less important crimes than murder, yet who now have a record which will affect them for the rest of their lives, and there is a powerful argument for getting rid of SWP completely.

A Media Conference (MC), was held to draw attention to the cases (at which our Editor, Phil Parry, spoke), but a public inquiry has since been refused..

Phil emphasised the disturbing fact that areas with a greater population, have FEWER police forces. “It is ridiculous that in a population of 3.1 million people we in Wales have FOUR forces”, he said. “Scotland is much bigger, but only has ONE. London has almost nine million people yet has just TWO. Think of the public money that is wasted duplicating resources, to pay fat salaries to all those Assistant Chief Constables, and Chief Constables!”.

At the MC, Phil said to the audience that he was regularly approached by solicitors during the 1990s, who said the police were doing bad things, and that something had to be done. On one occasion he was told to put away his notebook because he was informed that no record should be made of the conversation.

Following the MC some then marched to the Welsh Parliament/Senedd (WP/S), and Welsh Government (WG) buildings to demand action, with several senior politicians backing a Statement of Opinion to support the calls for an inquiry. A rally was also held outside Cardiff Crown Court

Several programmes have been broadcast looking at the events in which the police played such a major part, and a number are in production now. One was transmitted several years ago (although it is still available to be streamed) examining Mr O’Brien’s story in detail.

The promotional material before one of them proclaimed: “Episode One Monday 23rd May at 9pm Raphael Rowe delves into the brutal murder of Cardiff newsagent Phillip Saunders in 1987. The episode examines the investigation that led to the conviction of three innocent men, which resulted in their wrongful imprisonment. The episode reveals shocking police threats and coercion that led to the arrest and incarceration of Michael O’Brien, Ellis Sherwood and Darren Hall. After the men had spent more than a decade behind bars, a court appeal quashed the original verdict, but the unsolved case continues to haunt the city. Plus, for the first time ever, the victim’s sister and nephew break a 35-year silence and reveal exclusive insights into the case”.

Even before these terrible details emerged, Sky documentaries were broadcast, called Murder in the Valleys (MITV), looking into the horrific Clydach murders in 1999, when four people (Mandy Power her elderly disabled mother Doris, and two young children) were brutally beaten to death

This, too, has been highlighted by the imminent release of Gafoor, and condemnation of the decision, despite the fact that it is not (in theory) a miscarriage of justice case, although the man convicted of them (David ‘Dai’ Morris) died in jail still protesting his innocence. They were nominated for two awards at the BAFTA Cymru ceremony, including one for best Factual Series.

Another television programme, on 5Star (which pretended to be looking into ‘cold cases’), though was VERY different. and incurred the wrath of many close to what had happened. 5Star is a free-to-air television channel owned by Paramount Networks UK & Australia and a sister to Channel 5, which specialises in documentaries.

One of the daughters of Morris, Janiene Marie O’Sullivan, publicly declared to her dedicated website group: “I am finding it difficult to put into words how it made me feel….Basically it was a whole hour of Martin Lloyd-Evans (who led the investigation into the Clydach Murders) talking rubbish!…South Wales police have done themselves no favours again with this one”.

Morris’s sister Debra Thomas also said on the site: “Can you believe the utter verbal diarrhoea Martin Lloyd was spouting in that cheap channel 5 program…I also know the journalist is on this group so I hope and pray she gets to read this.”  And: “What disgraceful journalism!! They should hang their heads in shame”. The website Mrs Thomas helped set up, along with her niece, questions her brother’s guilt and has almost 31,000 members. On it she published a reply from Channel 5 to her complaint about the programme, but above the letter she wrote: “What research did they do????”.

The successful prosecution case against Morris was that he had gone to Ms Power’s looking for sex, high on drink and drugs, been spurned and beat the entire family to death, leaving his chain there in the process. Yet the evidence suggested Doris had been killed first, NOT her daughter, when presumably it would have been the person doing the spurning who would have died FIRST!

Mr O’Brien appears on MITV saying that he believes the conviction of Morris is another miscarriage of justice. He told the MITV documentary-makers:  “When I was released from prison I remember…saying ‘I’m going to be South Wales Police’s worst nightmare for what they did to me’, and I meant every word of it”.

In a formal interview for MITV (they wouldn’t do one with Phil), Assistant Chief Constable (ACC) of SWP, David Thorne, made a startling admission, about the mistakes that were made by the police in the earlier miscarriages of justice. During filming for the programme Mr Thorne appeared on, a forensic review found traces of DNA on a sock which it is believed was used to hold the murder weapon, that were “more likely than not” to have come from Mr Morris, and SWP trumpeted the finding.

They effectively said:  ‘We know we got it wrong in the past, but this time is different. Trust us’.

Yet a long-running campaign has been launched to establish Morris’ innocence, and after the first trial when he was convicted, his sister Debra gave a tearful press conference with her parents when she stressed her belief that Morris was NOT guilty. She said: “He just didn’t do these things…they’ve got the wrong man”.

ACC Thorne, though, insisted on MITV, that Morris was the RIGHT man, but acknowledged that mistakes had been made in previous police inquiries. He proclaimed:  “It’s safe to say we got it wrong (in the past).  We absolutely got it wrong. (There were) HUGE errors in the way investigations were conducted (but) we HAVEN’T found that in this case.  This is not a miscarriage of justice”.

However Phil had made a BBC Panorama television programme about the shocking Clydach Murders a few years after they had been committed, and he was the first to question the police actions during THIS investigation too.  As he said in the opening of the programme: “One police force in Britain has a disturbing record of locking up the wrong people in murder cases”.

During MITV, the Senior Investigating Officer (SIO) at the time, Detective Superintendent (DS) (Retd.) of South Wales Police (SWP) Martyn Lloyd Evans (who used the word ‘sublime’ when he meant ‘subdued’), is questioned about the apparent mistake of not releasing to the public a witnesses E-Fit constructed soon after the murders, which, it said, had a 90 per cent likeness. He replies that because the man seen was carrying a bag, and it was believed the killer did not have one, it was not put out.

Mr Evans said: “I didn’t think it was relevant”, but the E-Fit matched almost exactly the face of the first senior police officer on the scene, Inspector (at the time) Stuart Lewis, who (against all procedure) had only stayed there a matter of minutes, or that of his identical twin brother (another police officer, Sergeant [also at the time] Stephen Lewis, whose wife was having a gay affair with one of the victims). Inspector Stuart Lewis, had changed his shift to be on that night, however at crucial hours during the murders his whereabouts were unknown. He was driving a red Peugeot diesel, and a car similar to this was spotted near the murder scene. So to say the E-Fit was ‘not relevant’, appeared bizarre in the extreme, to critics of the police.

In the MITV films Mr Evans’ boss as the then head of SWP CID, Wynne Phillips, also said something incredible: “We can’t manufacture evidence”. But events before the murders, showed that SWP have done EXACTLY that.

To take just one of those cases (in which Phil was intimately involved, because he had made ANOTHER programme questioning THAT conviction [The Cardiff Newsagent Three case, which involved Mr O’Brien]), the police MANUFACTURED (as Mr Phillips said they DIDN’T do) an overheard ‘confession’ between two of the young men they had arrested, when an admission was effectively made to the murder of the newsagent, and they presented before the court ‘EVIDENCE’ that the group had run from the scene, but one of the three had bad legs and couldn’t run at all.

Now there is MORE evidence about the release of Lynette White’s murderer, and of how SWP have behaved…

The memories of Phil’s extraordinary 41 year award-winning career in journalism (including stories like these) as he was gripped by the rare incurable disabling condition Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia (HSP), have been released in the book ‘A GOOD STORY’. Order the book now! 

Tomorrow – how during that career (when he was trained to use clear and simple language, avoiding jargon), for Phil, empty threats of legal action as well as extraordinary abuse were commonplace, and it continues to this day.