As a vibrant legal action charity of just 25 members of staff, Reprieve punches well above its weight.
We were among the first lawyers into Guantánamo Bay and in total have acted for 83 prisoners there, 66 of whom have now been freed. We are also representing over 70 people facing execution abroad, and our death penalty team has worked in 16 different countries. Over the years the work of Reprieve staff has attracted an enormous amount of media attention (thanks in no small part to our celebrity supporters) and been publicly recognised by a number of influential organizations like The American Civil Liberties Union, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and the International Bar Association.
Released clients
Ayman was recently released from Guantánamo Bay after nine years of imprisonment without charge. Born in Palestine and raised in Saudia Arabia, Ayman was found to be ‘no threat’ by the Bush Administration in 2007. He was refused re-entry into Saudi Arabia because he lacked Saudi citizenship, and as it is not legally a state Palestine is unable to accept ex-prisoners, so Ayman was forced to wait for three years in Guantánamo for another country to offer him a home. The Life After Guantánamo team worked tirelessly on Ayman's case, and in the summer of 2010 he was successfully resettled in Hamburg, Germany, where he is now building a new life.
Arrested when he was just 17 years old, Ryan Matthews spent five years on Louisiana’s notorious death row before DNA evidence uncovered by Reprieve led to his exoneration and release. From the day he was arrested in New Orleans in 1999, Ryan protested his innocence, but he was wrongly convicted of murder and sentenced to death. In April 2004, Ryan was granted a retrial, and three months later all charges against him were dropped and he was released ‘in the interests of justice’. His exoneration was due in large part to investigations conducted by Reprieve, including the discovery of DNA evidence that linked the ski mask used in the murder to another man who was incarcerated on a separate homicide. Pauline Matthews, Ryan's mother, was unable to touch her son for five years because of prison rules. On his release, she described the ride home from jail: "I had to hold his hand in the car to make sure it was real... I have no room for bitterness... All I want is Ryan to be free. What's been done, you can't undo."
In June 2009 Reprieve’s youngest client, Mohammed el Gharani, was released from Guantánamo Bay to Chad, after a seven-year ordeal that began when he was just 14 years old. Reprieve represented Mohammed in the US courts, where a federal judge held that he was not and had never been an enemy combatant, and should be released. When Mohammed was finally returned to Chad his words to Reprieve on our speaker-phone as he walked out of the Chad police station rang through the office: “I am Mohammed el Gharani and I am free!” It was a wonderful moment.
Samantha Orobator was just 19 years old when she was arrested at Wattay Airport in Vientiane, Laos in August 2008, charged with attempted drug smuggling and detained at the notorious Phonthong Prison. Before Reprieve learned of her case, she had become pregnant, but was still facing the death penalty, despite the fact that Article 32 of the Lao Penal Law forbids the execution of a pregnant woman. However, we eventually secured a verdict of life imprisonment and a prisoner transfer agreement between the Lao and British governments. Samantha was therefore able to fly home to Britain in August 2009 and give birth to her baby in safety. Her sentence was subsequently commuted to three years by a British court.
Shabbir is a British national and a father of three who was arrested while on holiday in Pakistan in June 2008. He was accused of murdering his wife, and following torture by the police, he signed a confession. Investigation work by Reprieve revealed that witnesses had been encouraged to file witness reports against Shabbir, saying they had seen him shoot his wife. Thanks to the work of Reprieve Fellow Sultana Noon and Shabbir’s lawyer, Sarah Belal (now the Reprieve Fellow in Lahore), the prosecution's case was severely weakened, and various witnesses retracted their statements. Shabbir was acquitted, and was able to return to the UK. He said: “I am so glad that Sarah and Sultana were with me. All of the other prisoners were extremely jealous and could not understand why Sarah would come and visit me so often. They would ask, “Why is your lawyer so interested in your case?” First they asked if she was my wife and then they asked if she was family, but I just said that she was a good lawyer that cared about her clients”
Reprieve in the press
In 2009 Reprieve's founder and Director Clive Stafford Smith was the third most mentioned legal figure in the British press (just behind Madonna's divorce lawyer!). We have appeared in the pages of every national broadsheet in the UK and papers like the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post on the other side of the Atlantic.
Awards and prizes
In The Times Law 100 of 2009, a list of the most powerful and influential lawyers in Britain, Reprieve's founder and Director Clive Stafford Smith came 6th, while Lord Bingham of Cornhill, then our Chair of Trustees, took 4th place.
At the end of 2009 the magazine Harper's Bazaar selected Reprieve's Executive Director Clare Algar as one of the 20 Women to Inspire for 2010. In September 2010 Clare also won Voluntary Sector Achiever of the Year in the Women in Public Life Awards. She was selected from a shortlist of eminent candidates, including Sarah Brown and Barbara Natsegara.
Clive Stafford Smith has received a great many awards and honours in recognition of his work with Reprieve. In 2000 he was awarded an OBE for 'humanitarian services'. He has been chosen as a Soros Senior Fellow, a Rowntree Visionary (2005) and an Echoing Green Fellow (2005). In addition, he has received Lifetime Achievement Award from The Lawyer Magazine and The Law Society (2003), the Benjamin Smith Award from the ACLU of Louisiana (2003), the Gandhi Peace Award (2004), a Lannan Foundation Cultural Freedom Award (2008), an International Freedom of the Press Award (2009), and the Unione Nazionale Cronisti Italiani (for his defence of Sami el Haj). Last year he won the International Bar Association's Human Rights Award and the Judges’ Special Beacon Prize for Outstanding Philanthropic Achievement – the “Nobel Prize of the charity world”. The judges of the latter “were especially impressed by the combination of dedication and pragmatism that so clearly permeates Clive's long history of generosity and humanitarian spirit”.
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