Death in the Long Shadow

A Story by George Coombs

Please read carefully

“I have no peace to make, my conscience is clear”

The condemned cell; H.M.P. Cardiff. Evening, a time of darkness, shadows and the waiting walk into eternity. The prisoner is a Moslem

Omar Mattan spoke to the Imam who waited in Cardiff Prison with Mahmood Mattan. The Imam told Mattan that this was time to be at peace with God.

“I have no peace to make, my conscience is clear.”The reply was clear and definite. The date was Setember 3^rd 1952.

Cardiff Prison opened in 1827 and stands in the poorer area of the town. This was deliberate. During the Victorian period, a prison frequently dominated working class area and served as a stark reminder to the struggling poor to remain subservient and know their place. On September 3^rd 1952 at 9 a.m. the final execution was carried out. An innocent human being was murdered by the state.

Mahmood’s final resting place is in Westminster Cemetery Cardiff. Final, as before he had a “felons grave” in the grounds of Cardiff prison until his family succeeded in having him exhumed and given a dignified burial with his name written in Arabic as Well as English on the tombstone together with the stark, accusing words “Killed by injustice” These words have a special poignancy; racial prejudice and bigotry infected all areas of the justice system then as it does now nearly sixty years later.

Sean,an es prisoner of mine and a former inmate of Cardiff has,in a letter to me quoted with permission, described the prison as “Thoroughly corrupt and nationalistic.” This black man was housed in the segregation unit just one hundred and nine days before his scheduled release and he shared with me that this “…brings a whole new meaning to resettlement.”

Mahmood had a limited grasp of English. At no time was he offered an interpreter. Even his defence solicitor called him a “ half child of nature; a semi civilized savage.” Racial intolerance casts a long shadow.

Mahmood’s family were determined to clear his name. It took a hard forty six year campaign by these brave people before the conviction was finally quoshed as unsafe by the Court of Apeal on February 24^th 1978. Only then could Mahmood’s widow Laura arrange for the reburial of his remains with some semblance of dignity.

The conviction was declared unsafe by Lord Justice Rose Mr. Justice Holland and Mr Justice Perry�" Davey mainly because they felt the evidence of the main prosecution witness, Henry Cover was unreliable.

Was this known at the time? The Jury were not told that police had paid Cover to give his known-to-be-unsafe evidence. They were also not told that four independent witnesses had failed to identify Mahmood during an identity parade. We may rightly wonder why not.

The “Justice” system lacks many things including shame. Results matter more than truth as too many lost, pained and shattered lives have shown. Shame is a feeling that sometimes needs to be felt among the shadowy populace of the corridors of power.

It is hardly surprising that the family feel they can never forget or forgive. They received compensation yet regardless of the amount or anything else this would for them be stained with innocent blood.

All through this affair the sinister pain of institutionalized racism is felt. Decades of prejudice shadowed the family’s formative years as “children of the hanged man”. Omar Mattan has recalled that until the age of seven he had was told that his father died at sea. Omar even

recalls that “One day the Salvation Army band was playing near our house and I went out to sing with them only to be told that “We don’t want the son’s of hanged men” (Carol Midgley �"The Times 7/6/01).

Racism and notions of white English racial superiority were rife during Queen Victoria’s reign. They are far from unknown today. One Victorian source among many is the pamphlet from the Scottish essayist and historian Thomas Carlyle ‘An Occasional Discourse on the N****r Question’ published in 1850 where we read �"

“My friends I grieve to remind you but it is eternally the

fact, when heaven has made a slave no parliament of

men nor power that exists on earth can render him free.”

(Thomas Carlyle ‘Latter Day Pamphlets Chappel and Hunt ltd. London 1898)

On New Year's day Mrs Laura Mattan passed away at the Royal Gwent Hospital in Newport at the age of 78. In March 2003 the body of Omar Mattan was found on a beach in the far northo of Scotland. The family claimed he never got over the death of his father. In 2006 Mervyn the youngest son was jailed for six months for his part in a failed bank robbery. A month before this David found himself surrounded by armed police in St. Mary Street Cardiff following reports of a man brandishing a gun. All David had actually been doing was busking with his guitar. May Mahmood, Hussein Mattan, now far from that which killed him and his family all find a real peace at last.

George Coombs (868 words)