No help for jailed truckers
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Last week in Commercial Motor (22-28 May) you featured three separate cases of drivers in prison abroad who say they are innocent. The three cases are Peter Hobbs and John Mills in Bulgaria; Steve Bryant in Morocco; and Martin Crow in France.
On the face of it each has a good argument that they are innocent of the charges (or convictions) brought against them. Everybody knows the problem with drivers who are caught with drugs in their loads, which is that the drivers often did not put them there and have no way of inspecting their loads thoroughly enough to check. There are two distinct wrongs being committed here. The first is that the drivers are automatically blamed for the drugs (in Morocco possession automatically implies guilt, even it is unknowing possession).
But the second, and the one we in Britain should be more able to do something about, is that the Foreign Office is completely inactive (or worse) in its efforts to plead mitigation for these drivers.
I suspect that the reason is precisely that they are truck drivers and the Foreign Office is more concerned about keeping foreigners happy than helping Britons who are wrongly imprisoned,
Jon Smedley, Oxford.