Our consultancy work complies with our Aims and Objectives and benefit both our clients and the public. Anyone wishing to hire our members must do so through FIP by using the contact us form.
Satish Sekar
Founder
Satish began actively working on justice issues in 1990, having helped to set up human rights solidarity campaigns over the use of the death penalty in the Caribbean and the USA while a student in the 1980s. His greatest success is the incredible case of the Cardiff Five (Yusef Abdullahi, Stephen Miller, Tony Paris and the cousins John and Ronnie Actie). His work contributed to the successful appeal of the Cardiff Three in December 1992 (the Actie cousins were acquitted two years earlier). Unlike most campaigners and journalists, he saw the need to find the real killer and continued investigating, often alone, to achieve that and then secure meaningful changes in the system that had miscarried so badly. Along with Lynette’s natural mother the late Peggy Pesticcio, he then persuaded the authorities to look for the real killer, by re-opening the case for the first time in 1995. His first book Fitted In: The Cardiff 3 and the Lynette White Inquiry was published by us in 1998 and had a great impact. The case continued to make history as it was re-opened for the second time a year later, following important developments in policing and forensic science. Mainstream media had ignored this case almost totally since the successful appeals. This helped to convince him and colleagues that the work of The Fitted-In Project was far from over.
Satish has researched several miscarriage of justice cases. These include the Cardiff Five, Gary Mills and Tony Poole, Merthyr Tydfil's Gurnos Fire injustice and currently the extraordinary case of Neil Sayers. (For further information on Sayers’ case see the folder Forensic Science & Miscarriages of Justice). He has also researched issues of after-care for victims of miscarriage of justice, an ignored failing in the tariff system, the use of sport in after-care and also crime prevention. Since Fitted In: The Cardiff 3 and the Lynette White Inquiry was published, three more of his books have been published. The Cardiff Five: Innocent Beyond Any Doubt (Waterside 2012 [Second Edition available] 2017); Trials and Tribulations: Innocence Matters? (FIP 2017) and Forensic Pathology: Preventing Wrongs (FIP 2020).
Satish has led the fight against the injustice of the tariff system, highlighting the absurdity of the real killer of Lynette White, Jeffrey Gafoor, receiving a more lenient tariff (the minimum that must be served before the prisoner can apply for release on parole) than two of the Cardiff Three who were innocent victims of his crime. This and other injustices of the tariff system will be detailed in his latest book, Bad Form: How Tariffs Protect the Guilty and Punish the Innocent, which will be published in 2025. He is currently working on exposing a scandal in forensic pathology and its effect on many investigations. This has contributed to several miscarriages of justice, both the innocent being wrongly accused (and sometimes convicted wrongly) and homicides being wrongly labelled natural causes. He is also working on the tariff and parole issues, which resulted in the Parole Board deciding to free Lynette White's real killer unless he Secretary of State for Justice intervenes, or other means are used to challenge the decision.
Michael Mansfield
KC
Called to the Bar in 1967 Michael Mansfield has a B.A. Hons.Degree in History and Philosophy from Keele University before turning to law. He soon earned the respect of colleagues, mounting vigorous defences for clients. He made his name in the Angry Brigade trial in the early 1970s before establishing Tooks Court Chambers in 1984. He took silk (became a Queen’s Counsel) in 1989. Mansfield has never shied away from controversial cases, especially where civil liberties are at stake. He has been involved in high profile cases such as Barry George – wrongly convicted of the murder of television presenter Jill Dando. He has also represented the families of victims of the Bloody Sunday shootings at the inquiry into those deaths and the family of Jean Charles de Menezes the entirely innocent Brasilian electrician shot dead by police in 2005.
At inquests he represented the families of Tom Hurndall and James Miller – journalists murdered by the Israeli army. He also represented the families of the Omagh, Lockerbie and Dublin bombings. The relatives of victims of the Marchioness Disaster and families of the victims of the New Cross Fire were his clients. Mansfield represented striking miners at Orgreave and also the Newham Seven and Bradford Twelve – victims of racist attacks who defended themselves.
Andrew David Barclay
BSc, MSc, DSc, FFSSoc
Dave has a BSc degree with joint Honours in Chemistry and Zoology, and an MSc in Forensic Science and is a Fellow of the Forensic Science Society. He was a practising forensic scientist accredited by the UK Home Office as an authorised analyst from 1972, and from 1996 until he retired in 2005 was Head of Physical Evidence at the National Crime and Operations Faculty (NCOF), Bramshill.
His expertise consists of taking an overview of physical evidence in context with the work of behavioural investigative analysts (previously known as psychological or offender profilers), crime analysts and other evidence, assessing significance, and co-ordinating information from multiple sources. He undertook formal physical evidence reviews (finger-marks, pathologyand other forensic sciences) in several cases including the Soham murders, Sarah Payne, Milly Dowler, the Cardiff Five Miscarriage of Justice and the recent re-investigation of the World’s End murders in Scotland (1977). He was also responsible for determining and co-ordinating all the physical evidence activities in the Bloody Sunday Inquiry and the Omagh bomb investigation.
Ashley Gewert
Editor
Ashley first became involved in social justice in her home state of Kansas, in 2008. Outraged by the justice system, as well as the laws surrounding the death penalty in the United States, she quickly became engaged in anti-death penalty campaigns and contributed a significant amount of time to the Kansas Coalition Against the Death Penalty. She then became politically active as well, fighting for various causes during her time in Kansas. During this time, she worked at the Writing Center of Wichita State University (WSU), helping undergraduate and graduate students to edit and improve their work. During her time at WSU, she completed her undergraduate degree in Philosophy.
Ashley first met Satish in 2010 when she moved to Switzerland and began editing work for the FIP, as well as other works from Satish (she edited his book The Cardiff Five: Innocent Beyond Any Doubt). While in Switzerland, she completed her Master's Degree in Business Administration. She is currently working in Germany while continuing to edit both the FIP site and its publications. She also edited Trials and Tribulations: Innocence Matters? and Forensic Pathology: Preventing Wrongs.
