IF A prisoner believes he or she is a victim of a miscarriage of justice one of the more obvious options open to them to clear their name is to appeal. After one failed attempt they will usually continue with the remainder of the sentence, availing of the judicial processes of review and parole as and when the opportunities arise.
In the majority of cases this may be true, but for some prisoners another option is to talk to the media. Until, that is, they come across Section 37 of the standing orders covering conduct in prisons. It states: "Visits to inmates by journalists or authors in their professional capacity should in general not be allowed... ." Campaigners for Danny McNamee - who is serving a 25-year prison sentence for conspiracy to cause explosions, including the Hyde Park bombing, claim they have "not been able to get that far", in applying for a private interview with him.
A journalist, Lyn Solomon, is waiting for McNamee's case alleging involvement in a breakout from Whitemoor Prison in 1994, to be heard at Belmarsh Magistrates Court next year, before going ahead with a Channel 4 documentary challenging his bombing conviction.
She says an interview with McNamee would be conducted according to the closed visits regime in operation at Belmarsh and he is refusing to co-operate with it. McNamee, a physics graduate from Crossmaglen, Co Armagh, says he has never had any connection with the IRA and his supporters claim his name was smeared by the prosecution at his trial. The prosecution said his defence team was paid by the IRA.
"If we applied for an interview we would be subject to strict vetting by the prison authorities which is a fairly painful process. We would have to talk to Danny through a glass screen. He's not had any visits for two years because of this situation," says Lyn Solomon.
Some journalists will say that the rules can and are regularly circumvented and last week's Sunday Times interview, albeit by telephone, with the schoolboy convicted of the murder of the headmaster Phillip Lawrence, is one such example. Bob Woffinden, a journalist who writes for The Guardian, says journalists can and do visit prisoners during normal visiting hours. In a recent article he wrote about his attempts to visit Ian Simms who was convicted in 1989 of the murder of Helen McCourt. Following the publication of the article he was prohibited from visiting prisoners by the then head of the prison service, Mr Derek Lewis, unless he agreed to sign a written undertaking that he would not publish any more articles.
The McNamee documentary has been planned as a result of "new evidence" which has come to light since his trial at the Old Bailey in 1987. His supporters are pressing the Home Secretary, Mr Michael Howard, to consider sending his case for appeal and this time they are hoping his case will be looked on more favourably than the last. In 1991 the Court of Appeal refused McNamee leave to challenge his conviction on the grounds that his original trial had been fair and in 1994 McNamee's solicitor, Mrs Gareth Peirce, sent the Home Office a file containing all the new evidence and is still waiting for a reply.
In the meantime his supporters are doing all they can to highlight his case, including this week organising a performance headed by the comedian Eddie Izzard.
They are convinced that McNamee is a victim of a miscarriage of justice. "Most of the evidence is very technical," they argue, yet the most compelling piece of evidence is that someone else has already admitted it and is serving a prison sentence in Ireland. The IRA has consistently said Danny is nothing to do with them. The man who made the bombs has also admitted it."