{"id":639,"date":"2014-11-07T22:22:35","date_gmt":"2014-11-07T22:22:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fittedin.org\/fittedin\/?p=639"},"modified":"2014-11-07T22:22:35","modified_gmt":"2014-11-07T22:22:35","slug":"the-fitted-in-project-press-release-launching-flagship-projects-september-5th-2012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fittedin.org\/fittedinwp\/2014\/11\/07\/the-fitted-in-project-press-release-launching-flagship-projects-september-5th-2012\/","title":{"rendered":"The Fitted-In Project \u2013 Press Release Launching Flagship Projects (September 5th 2012)"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Fitted-In Project<\/strong> is proud to launch three of our flagship projects along with Satish Sekar\u2019s long overdue second book. We hope that not only will it not be his last, but that there will not be such a wait for his third.<\/p>\n

Satish Sekar pioneered the concept of vindication. The FIP is proud to launch\u00a0Vindication \u2013 The Last Hope of the Innocent<\/strong>\u00a0today (September 5th). It aims to ensure that the lessons of cases where victims of miscarriages of justice have been proven innocent by the identification or even conviction of real killers are fully learned. There have been six cases of vindication in Britain in the DNA age, but only one had an investigation of what went wrong \u2013 a process that was ultimately betrayed.\u00a0Vindication \u2013 The Last Hope of the Innocent<\/strong>\u00a0is long overdue.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the story of one of the most notorious miscarriages of justice in British history told by Satish Sekar, whose unremitting efforts helped lead to the vindication of the Cardiff Five. They always were innocent, but their freedom was not enough. The memory of Lynette White and her family deserved justice too and that required the conviction of the real killer, Jeffrey Gafoor.This book shows how even a very difficult case can be solved if there is the will to investigate it thoroughly. It details how an awful miscarriage of justice was finally corrected by the conviction of the real killer. Satish\u2019s work was pivotal to achieve this, and he is keen to continue the fight to ensure that the lessons of an extraordinary case are properly learned.\u201d<\/p>\n

Steven Bird\u00a0<\/strong>(Solicitor and Treasurer of CALA)<\/p>\n

\u201cI wish Mr Sekar all the best in his work. His passion in ensuring that all available support is directed to those wrongly convicted and incarcerated is admirable.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Rt. Hon. Jack Straw<\/strong>\u00a0(Former Home Secretary and Minister of Justice)<\/p>\n

We are delighted to launch\u00a0Proved Innocent \u2013 Vindication<\/strong>. We highlighted the inequity of a system that ignored some victims of miscarriages even though there is no doubt about their innocence. Eight years of refusing to allow the government to ignore an egregious injustice to be ignored resulted in a shameful error being corrected, but too late for Yusef Abdullahi. Despite his innocence being beyond question John Actie is still excluded from the scheme as is Colin Stagg, the original defendants in the Damilola Taylor Inquiry and the family of Phillip Skipper. Disgracefully, the family of victims of crime like Lynette White\u2019s do not qualify either.\u00a0Proved Innocent \u2013 Vindication<\/strong>\u00a0highlights this affront to justice.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a victim of institutional racism I quickly saw the injustice of the case of the Cardiff Five and came to appreciate and admire the work that Satish Sekar put in on that case especially. He cared about all of the victims of that injustice and others too. Twenty years later he continues to fight for justice. His role in that case especially was pivotal \u2013 having worked not only to free the innocent, but to bring the guilty to justice. Even after making history in that respect he continues to fight on to bring the system that allowed so gross an injustice to book. There are forgotten or ignored victims of crime. My family has first-hand experience of that. I appreciated Satish\u2019s often unseen efforts to help all of the victims. Sadly, the battle against injustice that brought us together remains to be won.\u201d<\/p>\n

Richard Adams\u00a0<\/strong>(Father of Rolan Adams)<\/p>\n

Just Tariffs \u2013 Protecting The Innocent\u00a0<\/strong>is another of our most important projects. We are honoured to launch it here today. It highlights the incredible situation where the truly guilty get treated more leniently than the undeniably innocent for the same crime. Astonishingly this happened\u00a0after\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>the criminal justice system claimed to have taken into account the fact that such a killer had allowed innocent people to go to prison for his crime. The Law Commission and Ministry of Justice, among others refuse to accept that there is a problem.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe case of the Cardiff Three, as it is best known, was a miscarriage of justice written in the starkest language. This was the story of three young men convicted of the 1988 murder of Lynette White in Cardiff who were freed on appeal in 1992. It is of particular significance because the real perpetrator of the murder, Jeffrey Gafoor, was finally traced through developments in DNA and, after attempting suicide, confessed to his crime, a crime made worse by the fact that he had allowed others to, as it were, serve his sentence for him. Such vindication, as Sekar explains in this book, is rare. More often, a shadow of suspicion lurks over the innocent man or woman, with unsubtle hints that some of them have \u2018got away with murder.\u2019<\/p>\n

The Cardiff Three \u2013 sometimes called the Cardiff Five, because five men were arrested and charged although only three convicted \u2013 was and will remain one of the most crucial cases in the history of criminal justice in the United Kingdom and is worthy of detailed examination. It is not only for what went wrong at the time but for the many other issues it has thrown up in its wake.No-one is better suited to the task of explaining and unravelling the complexities of the story than Satish Sekar whose pioneering work has played a large part in our understanding of the murder and its ramifications. He has ploughed an often lonely furrow in pursuit of the story long after it had slipped from the front pages of the national press. Investigating such cases is a time-consuming and sometimes dangerous occupation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Duncan Campbell<\/strong>\u00a0(Former Crime Correspondent of the Guardian)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Fitted-In Project is proud to launch three of our flagship projects along with Satish Sekar\u2019s long overdue second book. [\u2026]<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[636],"tags":[475,637,638,639,101,128,147,129,640,105,118,312,641,120,121,122,337,42,134,124,153,154,145,642,115],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fittedin.org\/fittedinwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/639"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fittedin.org\/fittedinwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fittedin.org\/fittedinwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fittedin.org\/fittedinwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fittedin.org\/fittedinwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=639"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/fittedin.org\/fittedinwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/639\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fittedin.org\/fittedinwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fittedin.org\/fittedinwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fittedin.org\/fittedinwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}