Stephen Ronald Jakobi, aged 56, Cambridge graduate, former trial lawyer, leading light of the London Solicitors Litigation Association, and expert in personal injury claims, knows a thing or two about the law.
One day, in July last year, he was lying in bed at home in Richmond, wondering where he would find the energy for his morning run and idly listening to a story on the radio about two Birmingham girls who had been arrested overnight in Bangkok and charged with carrying 26 kilos of heroin, when his brain suddenly dropped anchor. “26 kilos,” he said to himself. “26 kilos?” That was nearly 60 pounds. That was the weight of ten healthy babies. That was a whole donkey-load of heroin.
And since he knew a thing or two about the law, he rapidly thought it through. No heroin dealer in his right mind would trust two teenagers with £4 million worth of heroin. It would be like putting them in charge of a major business. So if they truly were carrying that much, the dealer must have taken great care to deceive them about the real nature of their load. In which case, they were innocent. Alternatively, these two limp-limbed little teenagers were never hauling anything like that kind of load across the airport concourse and this was all some kind of police set-up. In which case, they were equally innocent. “End of case,” thought Jakobi, and went out for his run.
But Stephen Jakobi was wrong. The case rumbled on. For three months, he watched in discomfort as Karyn Smith and Patricia Cahill were paraded for the press, looking young and pretty and easily daft enough to have done it. He saw them charged with heroin-smuggling and heard the Thai drugs squad baying for the death penalty. And since his own 18-year-old daughter was at that very moment trekking in Asia, he decided he really could not ignore his anxiety any more, so he got in touch with the Foreign Office and offered to help.
The Foreign Office were not too interested, and since Jakobi had never claimed to be anything other than an ordinarily naive middle-class professional man, he concluded that, in a case like this, his legal skills were not needed and that the Foreign Office must be making some kind of deal behind the scenes to sort things out in their own way. He was wrong again. But it was not until October, when his anxiety drove him to get in touch directly with the parents of Karyn Smith, that he began to realise just how bad things really were.
By that time, he found, a trap door had opened under Karyn Smith and she was tumbling into the darkness, betrayed by Thai law officers, who were weakened by corruption and incompetence, and ignored by British diplomats, who had their own reasons for pretending that she was guilty.
Karyn Smith’s parents live in a small but comfortable house on the end of a terrace on the Damson Wood estate in Solihull. Several hours before Stephen Jakobi first woke up and found himself worrying about the case on that July morning, Eric and Marilyn Smith had had their doorbell rung by two policemen. When they explained why they had come, Marilyn Smith was so sure that her daughter could never be involved in such a thing that she told the two officers bluntly that they were lying. Karyn was just on holiday, she said; her friend, Patricia, had a rich boyfriend who had paid for everything. The police insisted and then one of them said: “Of course, you know the penalty out there. They tie them to a cross and machine-gun them to death.”
For a while it was chaos: an army of reporters picnicking on the grass outside; Karyn’s boyfriend, Mark, ringing up in tears -”I’ve just seen our Karyn on television”. Then the phone rang and Eric Smith heard a blunt Brummy voice which was so full of earthy commonsense that even though it did belong to a reporter, he couldn’t help but trust it. The reporter was Robin Jones, from the Birmingham Mail. Half an hour later, Eric had slipped out of the house to meet him. An hour later, Eric had agreed that the two of them would fly out to Bangkok together. Jones’ editor would pay for the flight. It was the beginning of an odd alliance.
For a start, they have just about nothing in common. Eric Smith, a hospital technician, is wiry, lean and very shrewd. Jones is big, bulky and straight to the point. Smith votes Labour; Jones is a remorseless Tory. Smith has a passion for photography; Jones for the Beach Boys. But most important, while Eric Smith had an unbending certainty that his daughter loathed drugs and must be innocent, Jones had a hatred in his heart for all drug dealers, believed there was no smoke without fire and spent much of the flight to Thailand trying to persuade Smith that his daughter must be guilty. Both of them were surprised by what they found in Bangkok.
Jones was thrown immediately by Karyn Smith’s appearance. She was just a little waif, not the brassy little thug he had been expecting. He had imagined her being seduced by greed; in fact, she was penniless because she had just given her last cash to a Thai shop-lifter in the police station who she felt sorry for. But what stopped Jones in his tracks was the police chief, Lt Col Ritty. He spoke perfect English and explained that he had trained in California. Robin Jones went straight to the point and asked him if he liked the Beach Boys, and they were soon on familiar terms, which was when the police chief showed his hand.
“We think Karyn is innocent,” he said. “We think the other girl is guilty. We’ve interviewed both of them and the other girl keeps changing her story, but Karyn is telling the truth. She doesn’t know anything about all this. It’s for the drugs squad to decide, but as far as I’m concerned, she can go home. She’s a nice girl.”
Lt Col Ritty explained that Karyn’s travelling companion, Patricia Cahill, had known what she was doing. It was her boyfriend in Birmingham who had set up the deal. Karyn had been brought along for company and excluded from the deal-making. The police had checked the telephone records at the girls’ Bangkok hotel. From their room, both girls had made innocent calls. But Patricia had also been seen using the phone in the hotel foyer and those calls were to known drug dealers. She was now being held in a different police station.
Jones watched in amazement as the police let Karyn wander around the police station unchained and unsupervised. She sat laughing with the policemen who had arrested her, helping them to take her fingerprints, telling them she worked as a hairdresser in England and offering to cut their hair for them. When she said she wanted to talk to her mum in Solihill, the police chief gave her a phone. When she mentioned that the loo in her cell was dirty, the police chief said she must use his. By the time father and reporter flew back to England, they were united by a total faith in Karyn’s innocence and an easy confidence that she would soon be released.
In Birmingham, Jones checked into Karyn Smith’s background. He found, as he had begun to suspect, that she was an unusually naive girl. She had had learning difficulties at school and had failed all her exams. She was the sort who spent the evening dancing with a girlfriend and then went home to mum and dad. She had only met Patricia a few months earlier and had taken her under her wing because she was homeless and depressed. She had gone on holiday with no idea of where she was going and now, in jail, she was asking her father to bring an atlas so that she could find out where Thailand was.
Over the next three months, the optimism disintegrated. The Thai Drugs Squad, which was beyond the control of the friendly police chief, charged Karyn as well as Patricia. Bangkok lawyers who had taken a £250 deposit from Eric Smith failed to contact Karyn or to turn up in court. Other Thai lawyers refused to take the case unless Karyn pleaded Guilty. Eric Smith finally heard of an American, John Sobell, who was willing to represent her. Sobell was not even a lawyer. He was an insurance adjuster. Robin Jones said it was like asking the AA to defend you on a murder charge, but it was the best that Eric Smith could do.
In September, Eric and Marilyn Smith flew to Bangkok, determined that their daughter should be allowed to declare her innocence. But John Sobell had bad news: he had talked privately with a Thai judge who had warned him that if he was handling the case, he would convict Karyn even if she did not know how the drugs got into her suitcase; and, if she tried to deny her guilt, he would sentence her to death. Only a guilty plea would save her. The Smiths protested. Sobell apologised. This was Thai law. With a heavy heart, Eric Smith went to see his daughter in jail. There, he found that her Thai cell mates had already persuaded her that, regardless of the facts, she must plead guilty to save her life. So, it was agreed, and Eric and Marilyn Smith flew back to Birmingham bewildered.
It was soon afterwards that Stephen Jakobi called to share his suspicion that the girls could not knowingly have been carrying 26 kilos of heroin. He agreed to work for Karyn for free. It was too late for him to change the legal tactics in Bangkok. The trial was about to open and Karyn was to plead “guilty but ignorant”. If the court accepted that she truly was ignorant, she should escape with a five-year sentence. Jakobi kept his fingers crossed. Once more, Eric Smith flew out to Bangkok with Robin Jones at his side, who at now decided to write a book about the case.
Jones did some digging. He quickly established that the small sealed compartments of shampoo bottles and biscuit tins, in which the drugs had been discovered, were nowhere near big enough to contain 26 kilos of heroin. And he found that the Thai drugs squad had been tipped off about the girls and had followed them from their hotel to the airport. So, why not let them travel and monitor them, try to round up the whole ring? The answer, he discovered, was that the Thai drugs squad were entitled to lucrative reward money if they arrested couriers. They would pocket 25% of the value of seized drugs, which seemed to explain why they claimed to have found 26 kilos, and they could get this £1 million reward only if they convicted the couriers, which seemed to explain why Karyn had to be charged. Jones now saw that alongside the local drugs industry, a second criminal business had grown, in drugs enforcement.
Even so, as Jones watched the trial, he saw police evidence clearly pointing at the ignorance of Karyn and at the guilt of Patricia and her boyfriend in Birmingham. The airline on which the girls had flown said all the tickets had been booked and paid for by Patricia. At the hotel, all the bills had been paid by Patricia. All known contact with drug dealers was by Patricia alone. The two junior officers who had arrested the girls said that Karyn was relaxed and open, while Patricia had burst into tears as soon they were stopped and had then admitted that the heroin was hers.
But when the judge issued his ruling, he mentioned none of this. The shampoo bottles in Karyn’s suitcase had been concealed in her clothing, he said. That proved she knew they contained heroin, he argued. He sentenced her to 25 years in jail.
Stephen Jakobi quickly saw that if the law had failed to deliver the correct verdict, the best means of saving Karyn Smith was political. He decided to work with the Foreign Office to persuade the King of Thailand to issue a pardon and immediately delivered a letter to the Thai Embassy in London, signed by Eric and Marilyn Smith, explaining their daughter’s plight and asking for help. Within 24 hours, an official from the Thai Embassy called Jakobi to tell him that the King would grant a pardon. All he had to do was to avoid publicity.
Assuming that this must reflect a degree of activity by the Foreign Office, Jakobi called the British consul in Bangkok, only to discover that the consul knew nothing about it. He called the Asia department in London and found the same thing. What were the The Foreign Office playing at? Jakobi did not understand.
He continued to cultivate officials at the Thai Embassy and in the private office of the Prime Minister in Bangkok, phoning and faxing with each new development. And he drummed up whatever influence he had from old Cambridge connections to open up the Foreign Office. A few weeks later, the British consul in Bangkok contacted him. He wished to find out about this pardon, he said. He wondered if Mr Jakobi could tell him whom he should speak to. Now Jakobi understood. The Foreign Office had still not joined the game and he, with his amateur dipomacy, had had more contact with the Thais than Her Majesty’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office. He did his best to advise the consul.
Robin Jones was having similar problems. He had appealed to his readers for information about Patricia’s drug-dealing boyfriend and had set up a Trap The Rat hotline. He was inundated with information, all of which was consistent with Karyn’s story, but when he tried to pass his dossier to the British Embassy, he was told that the Foreign Office were not interested.
Eric Smith was promised by the British Embassy in Bangkok that they would visit Karyn every fortnight. But when he went back out to visit her, Karyn asked if he could get her a photograph of an Embassy official so that she would know the face if ever they decided to visit. The Embassy had promised to arrange for her to be innoculated against tropical diseases. But they had done nothing and she was suffering bouts of dyssentry. They had said they would ensure that her letters got through, but the Smiths went weeks without hearing a word. When they complained, they felt cold-shouldered. So far as they could see, the Embassy were happy to talk at them, never to listen.
Months passed. Patricia was tried in a juvenile court and sentenced to only 18 years. After the trial, she told a Birmingham TV crew that she was guilty. But there was still no sign of the promised pardon for Karyn. Jakobi tried to increase the pressure on the Thais, first by organising a “write-in” to the Thai Embassy, then by publicly criticising the Thais for failing to fuflill their promises, and finally by enlisting the help of a Member of the European Parliament, Stephen Hughes. Hughes arranged for other MEPs to write letters of protest to the Thais and raised the temperature by putting down an “urgency motion” in the European Parliament which began to attract international cross-party support.
As the European lobby gathered pace this summer, Eric and Marilyn Smith flew out to Bangkok again to see their daughter. By now they were struggling to keep up the fight. Marilyn had more or less collapsed with nerves. She had had to give up her work nursing old people and had become so anxious that she could not even drive a car. Eric, whose annual income is only £11,000 a year, had sold his precious cameras and his dark room equipment to pay for trips to Bangkok. Stephen Jakobi had raised £3,000 by running in the London marathon. But the Smiths were still hopelessly in debt, facing bills from John Sobell totally £110,000. In jail with Karyn, when she asked them what was happening and why she was still there, the Smiths had run out of answers.
As they were preparing to leave Bangkok, a British diplomat summoned them to a meeting in John Sobell’s office. They thought that seemed an odd place to meet but when they got there, they understood. The diplomat wanted “a quiet word”. They were told that they were upsetting the Thais, that they should play this the Foreign Office way and, ominously, that there was no chance of a pardon without the Foreign Office’s support. There was a heavy hint that they should drop Stephen Jakobi. Eric Smith told them he might not have been to Cambridge, but he was not an idiot and he was not about to get rid of the one man who had given Karyn the possibility of justice. “But you’re upsetting the Thais.” Smith told them that that was the Thais’ fault; they needed upsetting. “But don’t you see?” came the reply. “We’ve got to live here.”
The Smiths flew back to London with their determination renewed. This month (October), on the eve of the vote in the European Parliament, they went with Stephen Jakobi to meet three senior Foreign Office officials. One of them tried to persuade the Smiths to tone down their efforts. Karyn would be released in a year or two, he said. Why not just drop it and let events take their course? Marilyn Smith, with passion in her voice, told them: “She’s our daughter and she’s innocent. If she was your daughter, you wouldn’t drop it. Would you?” The official was silenced. The next day, in Strasbourg, the European Parliament voted by an overwhelming majority to call on the King of Thailand to honour his promise to pardon Karyn Smith.
In his office in Bloomsbury, Stephen Jakobi sits at his desk in an office whose walls are bare except for a blown-up Xerox of an 18-year-old girl with an innocent face. He is no longer naive about the Foreign Office. “After her trial, I sent the Foreign Office a legal memo explaining her innocence. That was awkward, it didn’t fit in with their preconceptions and I expect they trashed it. So now, we have a horrific situation – a very vulnerable young girl, who is obviously innocent, is locked up in a foreign prison while the British government pretend that she is guilty. I can see why they don’t want to attack the Thais in public. That is all to do with Anglo-Thai relations. But it is inexcusable not to be doing some bloody tough talking in private. But I’m afraid they just find it inconvenient to change their mind.”
ENDS
