Tag: further suggesting that “Scottish justice is getting a bad name from the Sheridan case. It may not have the trappings of a show trial

SHERIDAN PERJURY CASE DEVELOPMENTS

Further arrests have been made and charges of perjury laid in the police investigation following on from the Tommy Sheridan defamation case in 2006 (see No 716).  Mr Sheridan himself has now been joined on the list of accused on 15 February 2008 by fellow witnesses Rosemary Byrne (erstwhile Scottish Socialist MSP and the only one of that group to give evidence on Mr Sheridan’s behalf), Graeme McIver (now the Solidarity Party national secretary), Patricia Smith, and Jock Penman (both Solidarity Party members).  Each of these four was a former member of the Scottish Socialist Party executive committee, and had attended the controversial executive committee meeting of 9th November 2004 (see nos 562, 563, 569, and 587).  On 19 February Mr Sheridan’s wife Gail and her father Angus Healy were also arrested and charged.  Just to complete the cheery picture for Mrs Sheridan, her employer British Airways suspended her from her air cabin crew job following a report made to them by Lothian and Borders Police also resulting from the perjury investigation.  Mrs Sheridan denies all allegations against her. 

The arrest of Mrs Sheridan and Mr Healy has led to a rallying of support for the Sheridan cause – making unlikely bedfellows of Ian Hamilton QC (http://www.ianhamiltonqc.com/wordpress/?p=360 ), Alan Cochrane from the Daily Telegraph (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2008/02/21/do2103.xml) and George Galloway MP writing in the Daily Record at http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/comment/columnists/lifestyle-columnists/george-galloway/2008/02/25/i-would-defend-tommy-even-if-i-thought-that-he-was-guilty-which-i-don-t-86908-20330969/ .

Hamilton writes Edinburgh and Lothians Police are conducting a vendetta against justice itself.”  Cochrane writes that “by any standard or criteria of fair play