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Bryant: I'll sue the FO
Page 5
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• Steve Bryant, the British owner-driver imprisoned in Morocco for 10 years on drug smuggling charges, is planning to sue the Foreign Office for falling to help get him released.
Bryant, 47, was released from prison two weeks ago after receiving a royal pardon from the King of Morocco (CM 15-21 May). He has maintained his innocence throughout his sentence.
"My bitterness if focused against the British Authorities, not the Moroccans, because they have done nothing for me. They helped transfer other prisoners. I'm a truck driver and they don't help truck drivers, do they?"
Bryant was arrested in Tangiers in 1993 after Customs found 3,000kg of cannabis resin hidden in cartons in a load of squid in his truck. The factory owner where Bryant loaded was also convicted and imprisoned, but released later after paying a £3,500 fine.
Bryant believes he has a case against the Foreign Office which says, in an internal document dated April 19971 that they did not want to support a pardon plea on the grounds his conviction was unsafe, because it would then have had to support cases of other British truck drivers caught in similar circumstances. Moroccan law places responsibility for the contents of the truck on drivers and the Foreign Office was unwilling to fight against such an established legal principle.
Bryant has spoken of his overwhelming relief to be out of prison, where he was held in appalling conditions, and of his fear for the future. "I've still got to face up to my mother's and father's deaths. I don't know how things will hit me. But I feel I've got my membership of the human race back again."
He has spent the last few weeks visiting his four children and trying to adjust to normal life.
• An exclusive interview with Bryant will appear in CM12-19 June.