Seven dangerous prisoners escaped punishment yesterday for their alleged involvement in a jail riot after their lawyers used new human rights laws to have the case dismissed.
A judge at Newcastle Crown Court accepted that a delay of nearly three years in bringing the case to a trial was a breach of their right to have the matter heard in a “reasonable time”.It is the first time that article six of the Human Rights Act has been used in this way since it was introduced last October. The Crown Prosecution Service said last night it would be reviewing the judgment to see if other cases were in danger of being thrown out.Five prison officers and six prisoners were injured in the riot at Full Sutton high-security prison, near York, in April 1998. The violence was one of the worst disturbances at a British prison in recent years.More than 30 prisonersbarricaded themselves into a wing of the jail before attacking members of staff and causing widespread damage.Seven of the 32 alleged rioters were due to face criminal charges yesterday but Judge Timothy Hewitt ruled that to proceed with the trial would be “contrary” to section six of the Act.Neil Gafney, Ian Jennings, Antonio Daniels, Paul Francis, Paul Dewer, Darren Price and Stephen Cutter were cleared of violent disorder.. “It’s seared on my mind,” Bill Parr, a search-and-rescue dog handler, said quietly. “I found the girls, in the dark, in the middle of a field, strapped to their airline seats.

They were wrapped in each other’s arms, and their fingers were crossed.”

“It’s seared on my mind,” Bill Parr, a search-and-rescue dog handler, said quietly. “I found the girls, in the dark, in the middle of a field, strapped to their airline seats. They were wrapped in each other’s arms, and their fingers were crossed.”
Mr Parr, who combed the hills around Lockerbie, on that distant winter’s night, after Pan Am 103 exploded, has been bracing himself for weeks for the result from the Dutch court He was not anxious about the verdict itself. Like many people in the town he believes the court case was only going to “get the monkeys, not the organ grinder”, buthe was concerned about the return of the world’s press and the inevitable resurfacing of memories.Standing at Tundergarth, on the outskirts of the town, in the field where the Pan Am cockpit landed, his memories are harrowing.

He entered the cockpit less than an hour after the explosion. The only sound was the wind as the little torch, strapped to his forehead, traced the outline of the bodies of the pilot and six passengers.”At least I expected to find bodies there,” he said. He did not expect to stumble across the entwined girls in the nearby field, or the 20 other bodies lying close by. And he did not expect to find two children, one aged 15 months, the other three years old, lying in another field.Even then mass murder, not an accident, was suspected and Mr Parr could not move the children, only tag and record them “The hardest part was walking away,” he said. “All I wanted to do was move them together.”Lockerbie lost 11 of its own that terrible night but the town never participated in the campaign for a trial, which was led by relatives of the 259 passengers who perished.