Yes, I admit it: justice in Cyprus is blind and blameless. Now can I phone my lawyer, officer? (Jan. 12)
When I heard that car industry boss Carlos Ghosn had been arrested, I assumed it was for green-lighting the dreary Nissan Juke. But no. It turned out that his alleged crimes had something to do with accountancy.
I don't understand this sort of thing. When I visit my accountant and he is talking about pensions and tax, I know it's important, so I fix him with a hard stare and concentrate like hell. But when he's finished, none of it has gone in, because all I heard was a voice in my head saying: "Must listen."
Anyway, Ghosn claimed that all the charges came about because it was felt in Tokyo he was letting the French arm of the company, Renault, trample all over the Japanese part, Nissan. As a motoring writer, I felt it was important to get up to speed, but after two minutes of reading, I felt the onset of sleep coursing through my head like a big warm blanket.
When I woke up, Ghosn was gone.
Rumours suggested a team that included former Green Beret commandos dressed as Gregorian musicians had turned up at the place where he was under house arrest and smuggled him onto a bullet train, and then aboard a private jet inside some kind of musical instrument case. Yup. He'd scarpered. So, obviously, he was as guilty as hell of whatever it was he's supposed to have done.
But then I learnt that in Japan, prosecutors have a 99.9% success rate. If I were facing those odds, I'd also want to be smuggled out of the country — in a matchbox if necessary. Of course, you expect to find weird justice in backward places, but Japan's a surprise. And it's not the only one.
In Armenia, they threatened to make a man sit on a bottle until he confessed to a crime he didn't commit.
In Australia, Plod kept the recording devices off as they "interviewed" a suspect and then miraculously turned them on just before he owned up. The man was inside for 11 years before the authorities admitted they may have screwed up.
The Canadians have been busted for helping a witness with his mortgage payments. The Finns tried one woman twice for murdering her husband and got it wrong both times. The Icelandics have been known to keep suspects in solitary for more than 600 days.
Even the Germans can't be trusted. In 2001, a man crashed his car into a river. His body was discovered after eight years of being nibbled by fish. There was no evidence that a crime had taken place, but even so, various members of his family were convicted of his killing.
And all of this brings me neatly to recent events in Cyprus. Now, I've had some experience with police in that part of the world. On a night out in Crete, my then girlfriend was touched by a young local man in a bar. When I asked him to stop, he and his friends took me outside, tied me into an interesting reef knot and then peed on me. When the police arrived, one of the locals punched me in the head, and after that I was arrested for "insulting the Greek flag".
It was very poor policing, if I'm honest, but this rape business in Ayia Napa is on another level. Sure, when the case was first reported, I figured the police were on the right track. They imagined some silly woman had it away with a man she'd just met, his mates piled in, and the next day she dealt with the guilt by saying she'd been raped.
I wasn't at all surprised that the Israelis involved in this incident were allowed to go home, and was actually quite glad that she'd been charged with causing a public mischief.
But then, interesting details started to emerge. The bruises on her body. The fact she hadn't been allowed access to a lawyer. The extraordinary confession, which plainly hadn't been written by anyone with English as a first language. "I discovered them recording me doing sexual intercourse." Really? Sure, the police in Ayia Napa must be heartily fed up with the annual arrival of several thousand puking, brawling sex enthusiasts, so it's only natural they'll have little sympathy when one of them cries rape. I get that. But what were the courts thinking of? In a civilised country such as Cyprus, it's their job to take a cool, detached look at the evidence. And yet, somehow, they reckoned there was no reasonable doubt, found her guilty and gave her a four-month suspended prison sentence.
There are calls for tourists to boycott Cyprus and I hope they have the reach of a bittern's boom. I hope every youngster thinks about the plight of that poor young woman and decides to go somewhere else. And I hope the police who conducted her interview are made to sit on very large bottles until they have finished writing out, a thousand times: "I must not fabricate statements."
I have a similar problem with America. Last year, a woman called Anne Sacoolas left the US military base in Northamptonshire where her husband worked and drove on the wrong side of the road until her car hit a young biker called Harry Dunn. He was killed and she fled back to the States.
Harry's devastated parents have been a model of dignity as they have pleaded with her to come back and face the music. But she has claimed diplomatic immunity and is apparently backed by the US authorities, who say that charging her is not a "helpful development".
Her US lawyer has suggested that our legal system isn't up to much, and you know that she has in mind the Guildford Four and the Birmingham Six. Yet America, remember, is a country that can't even work out a humane way to execute criminals. Unless they are several thousand miles away, at an airport in Baghdad.
So let's end on a lighter note by wondering if the people who helped Carlos Ghosn escape will one day become known as the Renault Five.
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And here's the Sun column: "Resign from the Royal Family? Do they know the next in line is…Prince Andrew?"
When I heard that car industry boss Carlos Ghosn had been arrested, I assumed it was for green-lighting the dreary Nissan Juke. But no. It turned out that his alleged crimes had something to do with accountancy.
I don't understand this sort of thing. When I visit my accountant and he is talking about pensions and tax, I know it's important, so I fix him with a hard stare and concentrate like hell. But when he's finished, none of it has gone in, because all I heard was a voice in my head saying: "Must listen."
Anyway, Ghosn claimed that all the charges came about because it was felt in Tokyo he was letting the French arm of the company, Renault, trample all over the Japanese part, Nissan. As a motoring writer, I felt it was important to get up to speed, but after two minutes of reading, I felt the onset of sleep coursing through my head like a big warm blanket.
When I woke up, Ghosn was gone.
Rumours suggested a team that included former Green Beret commandos dressed as Gregorian musicians had turned up at the place where he was under house arrest and smuggled him onto a bullet train, and then aboard a private jet inside some kind of musical instrument case. Yup. He'd scarpered. So, obviously, he was as guilty as hell of whatever it was he's supposed to have done.
But then I learnt that in Japan, prosecutors have a 99.9% success rate. If I were facing those odds, I'd also want to be smuggled out of the country — in a matchbox if necessary. Of course, you expect to find weird justice in backward places, but Japan's a surprise. And it's not the only one.
In Armenia, they threatened to make a man sit on a bottle until he confessed to a crime he didn't commit.
In Australia, Plod kept the recording devices off as they "interviewed" a suspect and then miraculously turned them on just before he owned up. The man was inside for 11 years before the authorities admitted they may have screwed up.
The Canadians have been busted for helping a witness with his mortgage payments. The Finns tried one woman twice for murdering her husband and got it wrong both times. The Icelandics have been known to keep suspects in solitary for more than 600 days.
Even the Germans can't be trusted. In 2001, a man crashed his car into a river. His body was discovered after eight years of being nibbled by fish. There was no evidence that a crime had taken place, but even so, various members of his family were convicted of his killing.
And all of this brings me neatly to recent events in Cyprus. Now, I've had some experience with police in that part of the world. On a night out in Crete, my then girlfriend was touched by a young local man in a bar. When I asked him to stop, he and his friends took me outside, tied me into an interesting reef knot and then peed on me. When the police arrived, one of the locals punched me in the head, and after that I was arrested for "insulting the Greek flag".
It was very poor policing, if I'm honest, but this rape business in Ayia Napa is on another level. Sure, when the case was first reported, I figured the police were on the right track. They imagined some silly woman had it away with a man she'd just met, his mates piled in, and the next day she dealt with the guilt by saying she'd been raped.
I wasn't at all surprised that the Israelis involved in this incident were allowed to go home, and was actually quite glad that she'd been charged with causing a public mischief.
But then, interesting details started to emerge. The bruises on her body. The fact she hadn't been allowed access to a lawyer. The extraordinary confession, which plainly hadn't been written by anyone with English as a first language. "I discovered them recording me doing sexual intercourse." Really? Sure, the police in Ayia Napa must be heartily fed up with the annual arrival of several thousand puking, brawling sex enthusiasts, so it's only natural they'll have little sympathy when one of them cries rape. I get that. But what were the courts thinking of? In a civilised country such as Cyprus, it's their job to take a cool, detached look at the evidence. And yet, somehow, they reckoned there was no reasonable doubt, found her guilty and gave her a four-month suspended prison sentence.
There are calls for tourists to boycott Cyprus and I hope they have the reach of a bittern's boom. I hope every youngster thinks about the plight of that poor young woman and decides to go somewhere else. And I hope the police who conducted her interview are made to sit on very large bottles until they have finished writing out, a thousand times: "I must not fabricate statements."
I have a similar problem with America. Last year, a woman called Anne Sacoolas left the US military base in Northamptonshire where her husband worked and drove on the wrong side of the road until her car hit a young biker called Harry Dunn. He was killed and she fled back to the States.
Harry's devastated parents have been a model of dignity as they have pleaded with her to come back and face the music. But she has claimed diplomatic immunity and is apparently backed by the US authorities, who say that charging her is not a "helpful development".
Her US lawyer has suggested that our legal system isn't up to much, and you know that she has in mind the Guildford Four and the Birmingham Six. Yet America, remember, is a country that can't even work out a humane way to execute criminals. Unless they are several thousand miles away, at an airport in Baghdad.
So let's end on a lighter note by wondering if the people who helped Carlos Ghosn escape will one day become known as the Renault Five.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
And here's the Sun column: "Resign from the Royal Family? Do they know the next in line is…Prince Andrew?"