Michael Campbell in a Medieval World

It is said that no one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails. A nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens, but its lowest ones ― Nelson Mandela

Faughart man Michael Campbell’s ongoing detention in a Lithuanian prison continues to cause concern among prisoner rights activists in Ireland. The Repatriate Michael Campbell Campaign Group has formed with a view to pressing for his immediate repatriation to Ireland. A sister campaign in the US also has its shoulder to the wheel.

Michael Campbell: from the Irish Examiner

In 2011 Campbell was sentenced to 12 years imprisonment having been arrested in 2008. Alleging a British sting operation Campbell claims that the British security agency MI5 set him up. Few would be surprised if that were true. Set up and cover up seems very much a twin track approach with British security services.

His guilt or innocence is of secondary concern to those who feel his treatment merits their intervention: Mary Larkin of Port Richmond on the US side of the pond said:

I feel like this man, whether right or wrong, we’re just trying to get him back to Ireland to serve his sentence ... he’s being denied his legal rights and his human rights. A European Union directive (EU Prisoner Transfer Agreement of December 2011) says prisoners should serve time in their own land. So right now, it’s about his human rights, and to have him back in Ireland.

Reading through a report by Professor Rod Morgan written in 2010, it beggars belief that people are held in atrocious conditions particularly in a country which is part of the European Community. The values of progress and the Enlightenment with much of their roots in France, a society at the heart of the European Union, seem centuries removed from Lithuanian prison regimes. Professor Morgan was reporting in his capacity as Home Office advisor to the five criminal justice inspectorates in England and Wales. For over four decades he has written on conditions of detention. He has first hand experience of custodial circumstances in Lithuania.

Professor Morgan's report was compiled in respect of an extradition request from Lithuanian prosecutors against Liam Campbell, an older brother of Michael. In writing it he drew heavily but not exclusively on reports from the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT). The CPT visited the prison where the Faughart man is currently held in 2000, 2004 and 2008. In his own work Morgan drew attention to the plight of Michael Campbell who he said was reported to be:

Detained in a very small cell with many inmates
Denied access to his family
Permitted to have a shower only once a week
Deprived of adequate toilet facilities, using a hole in the ground with no running water
Not given appropriate personal hygiene items
Detained in a cell with very little natural light
Given very little food per day
Sleeping on a metal bed with a thin mattress
Permitted one hour per day in the fresh air

The CPT also found evidence of ill treatment by prison staff in the prison and in 2008 described cells as deplorable. It concluded that the conditions there could be characterised as inhuman or degrading

No prisoner should be held in such archiac conditions. For many of them unfortunately for now there is no recourse. Michael Campbell being an Irish citizen should however be able to avail of repatriation which is being denied him by the Lithuanian authorities who display a medieval attitude to prison conditions. While it is not possible to get all the prisoners freed from detention there it is very much within our remit to step up the pressure to have Michael Campbell returned to serve the remainder of his sentence in Ireland, where prison conditions, are considerably more improved despite a number of highly critical reports into them over the years.

A spokesperson for the campaigh group said:

It defies belief that the Irish government can assume presidency of the EU yet condone the incarceration of an Irish prisoner in such deplorable and inhumane conditions in a European prison.

While the Irish government might find it difficult to acquire bragging rights about another’s prison system, given the litany of damning reports against its own, Minister for Foreign Affairs Eamonn Gilmore should be pressing the issue forcefully with his European counterparts. If Michael Cambell is not currently a serious foreign affair then the affairs of state have become convulsed with bad management and oversight.

Michael Campbell should be repatriated not next year, or next month but now.

Radio Free Eireann will be discussing the plight of Michael Campbell tomorrow evening shortly after 1800 Irish Time.