Hi everyone
We just want to take a moment to thank everyone for their support. We reached 75000 signatures in less than 48 hours, which is just unbelievable, and we are so grateful for all the kind messages from all around the world. Jim really appreciates the support from old colleagues, good friends, kindred spirits, and complete strangers who have not allowed this to go unnoticed. We will continue to fight while we continue to have you at our backs.
Updates will be infrequent after this one and we will only issue them on important milestones (to avoid spamming you all with notifications!).
Having spent the last two days doing back to back press calls, we want to put all the information down in one place for all to see, as the story is long and complex and is (by definition) not being fully represented in the media. Apologies and fair warning - this will be a long update. Feel free to read as much as you like - we just wanted to lay everything bare for our supporters and be 100% transparent.
Jim, having spent his whole career as a geologist for various Oil and Gas companies around the world, is a very well travelled man and has spent a huge amount of time steeping himself in other cultures - their art, their history, their archaeology, their traditions. It was a key component of his job and has been the overarching passion of his life. I am currently writing this update from his small study in the house he shares with his wife in Kuala Lumpur, and the walls are covered top-to-toe in old maps of Europe, the UK, Asia and the Middle East, as well as line drawings of his beloved Bath, Malacca (his adopted home in Malaysia), and sites of interest in Indonesia, Syria, Iran, and Yemen to name but a few. Next to me sits a picture of Sarijah and Joshua, his wife and son, sitting on a wall at a historical ruin when they lived in Damascus over 30 years ago. All around are signs of his travels. Stones that he has picked up from various countries, a lump of volcanic pumice from Indonesia, a few fossils of prehistoric fish and insects purchased from hawker stalls around the world, and flags of the countries that are most important to him (the UK, Malaysia and, I'm pleased to say, the welsh flag which I gave him when I first met him two years ago.) The shelves are lined with travel guides, copies of national geographic, and histories of Southeast Asia, Europe and the Middle East.
On the 5th of March 2022, Jim travelled to Iraq on a pre-organised Geology and Archaeology tour. He went with a small independent tour company, run by a British Citizen and highly experienced tour guide in the Middle East. This Tour Guide, a man named Geoff, had been in contact with Jim and the others for some time, attempting to plan the trip around Covid travel restrictions, and when the rules changed to make it feasible to travel, Jim was very excited. The Tour Guide Geoff was 85 years old and had had a long and storied career, and, as we understand, this was due to be his final trip to the Middle East. Jim would go on these trips regularly, usually twice a year in pre-covid times, to indulge his wanderlust and his breadth of experience in other cultures. Despite this being his first trip to Iraq, we had no reason to believe that it would be any different. He would return to us full of stories and brandishing photographs of various experiences he had had along the way.
Jim spent the trip sending us photos and infrequent updates via whatsapp. He is a fiercely independent man by nature and so we tend to look out for sporadic updates, to catch up with him briefly, and then to await his next check-in. The first inkling that we had that something was wrong was the 20th of March, when he did not arrive back at KLIA airport in Kuala Lumpur. He messaged a while later to say that he was fine, that there had been some trouble at customs, and that a member of the tour had been taken severely ill. We took him at his word and awaited further updates. We now understand that he was in a dire situation, and was merely trying to keep us from worrying.
Over the next week or so we received very sporadic, short messages from Jim. "I'm fine", "Things are taking a long time to process here", "I'm unlikely to be home until next week". At this point we believe that Jim was unaware of the severity of the situation, and we certainly were. Given his travel experience and knowledge of the Middle East we deferred to him to sort the situation out himself, believing there was nothing we could do to help. 8 days after Jim was originally supposed to fly home, Leila asked me to call the foreign office to ask whether they were aware that Jim was in Iraq, in case there was anything they could do to help. The local embassy reached out the following day asking for our information and confirming that they had been in touch with Jim, and would ask his permission to engage with us. He approved, and they told us what they knew of the story up to that point.
As it transpired, towards the end of the trip, Jim and the others had been taken to a site in Iraq called Eridu, which as far as we can see from videos and images online and images shared by Jim on the day, is a wide open desert area with sand stretching away as far as the eye can see, and piles of debris scattered everywhere. Broken pieces of masonry, small fragments of pottery, small pieces of stone and shards of what look like old tile are littered all around. There are no guards present, no signage warning against removal of any of the detritus, and indeed neither the Ministry of Tourism representative with them nor the experienced Tour Guide team led by Geoff gave even a hint of warning that these items were considered valuable. Indeed, Jim and others on the tour enquired whether they would be ok to take home a few shards from the site to remember the trip by and were told that this would be perfectly fine, as the debris had no economic or historical value. Iraqi authorities had clearly not thought the debris important enough to collect and put in a museum. The tour guide and his trainee tour guide themselves, experienced as they were in the country and the wider region, also picked up a few keepsakes from the ground to take him with them to commemorate the trip and their interest in the history of Mesopotamia and Iraq. All of these items were, we understand, broken shards of pottery and stone a few centimetres across.
Following this excursion, it started to become clear to the tour members that Geoff's health was failing. He took to remaining with the bus while they went to visit sites, leaving the majority of the guide work to his trainee, who we understand was being trained to replace him on future trips. On the last day of the tour, Geoff's health had begun to deteriorate more rapidly, and we have been told that he was unable to even speak as they travelled to the airport to catch their flights home. The group, concerned and keen to get him on the flight back to the UK to receive medical attention in his home country, rushed through check-in but were stopped at the desk. The staff at the airport were unwilling to allow Geoff to travel given his obvious ill health and called for an ambulance to take him to a hospital in Baghdad for urgent treatment. Other tour members, all with their own flights to catch to various countries, were keen to get home and so Jim and another man, a German citizen (who we are not naming to protect his anonymity as we have never had contact with him or his family), volunteered to wait with the bags and ensure Geoff received medical attention whilst the rest of them travelled home.
Once Geoff's ambulance arrived and he had been taken away to a hospital in Baghdad, customs officials at the airport began to take an interest in the items mentioned above which were contained in the luggage of Jim and the tour guides, Geoff and his trainee. The trainee had in fact already caught a flight back to her home country at this point. Jim and the German man, the only two tour members left with the remaining baggage, were arrested at this point for attempted exportation of artifacts of historical significance to Iraq, and remanded in custody in the airport holding cell where they still remain five weeks later at the time of writing. Initially, all 32 items recovered from everyone's luggage were ascribed to Jim, and in the confusion he was unable to clarify this. Luckily, by the time we found out what was happening a few weeks later and engaged a lawyer in Baghdad (who has been an absolute superstar), we were able to recover the CCTV footage from customs at the airport showing which items were in which baggage, and ensure that Jim did not take the fall for everyone in the group. In total, for the avoidance of doubt, we currently understand that Jim was in possession of 12 pieces, with the remaining 20 spread across the luggage of Geoff and his trainee tour guide. The judge reviewed this clarification and the CCTV evidence and, satisfied, issued arrest warrants for Geoff and the trainee tour guide. Geoff was remanded in custody in his hospital bed in Baghdad, and the trainee tour guide had already left the country and so escaped the warrant, however we understand that they will not be able to re-enter Iraq without being arrested. Geoff sadly passed away in custody in the hospital in Baghdad of a suspected stroke. We would like to again take this opportunity to extend our heartfelt sympathy and solidarity to his family and friends.
Our lawyer informed us that the majority of the investigation phase of the case had passed already, with Jim having no retained legal representation during this time, however we were able to submit some key pieces of supporting evidence for Jim's lack of criminal intent and complete surprise at the seriousness of the charge, as well as the lack of information surrounding this law at the site in question. The Iraqi authorities sent the debris off to the Iraqi National Museum for analysis to see whether the pieces met the criteria to be classified as "artifacts". It transpires that these criteria are twofold - "are they older than 200 years old?" and "are they manmade"? The answer to both of these being yes, and with no further interrogation of the actual historical or economic value of the items, it was decided that the shards were indeed "artifacts" and as such the case should be passed to the Felony court for sentencing.
The charge that was levelled at Jim at this point was Article 41 of the Iraqi law no55 concerning antiquities. It reads as follows: "whoever exported or intended to export, deliberately, an antiquity, from Iraq, shall be punishable with execution." There is no nuance to the sentencing. This is not a maximum potential sentence, or the top of a broad range, as we understand it. You can view this here:
We have, since then, been lobbying the FCDO under the radar for nearly three weeks. We had been advised to keep the case as quiet as possible so as not to ruffle any feathers in Iraq, however after three weeks of radio silence from anyone in authority at FCDO, only to now be told that they are unable to help for fear of upsetting the Iraqi authorities by intervening in their judicial process, we have no choice but to start this petition, to speak to the media, and shout from the rooftops about this absolute injustice before it is too late.
We also want to be clear at this point that we cannot fault the efforts of the Consul, in the on-the-ground embassy team in Baghdad. I won't name him to maintain his privacy but he has been excellent, working with us and our lawyer, imploring superiors to help, and checking on Jim regularly. He has also brought him books and other care packages to bring his spirits up. It seems to us however that his hands are tied by the complete lack of engagement and apathy of his superiors. We have never spoken to any minister in the foreign office about this case, even junior ministers. Not James Cleverly or Amanda Milling and certainly not Elizabeth Truss. We have also never spoken directly with the British ambassador to Iraq, despite being repeatedly told that he is taking a keen interest in the case. It is our view that the entire FCDO political hierarchy has abandoned Jim to his fate, all the way up to the Prime Minister.
The situation that we now find ourselves in has two outcomes. The first, our preferred, is that the FCDO engages with us and uses the legal and constitutional powers at its disposal to help. Our lawyer has drafted a proposal under Iraqi law to have the case closed before trial, which he wishes to present to the DPP in Iraq, however will not be able to secure a high level meeting with the DPP and other judiciary officials in time unless the foreign office puts their weight behind the plan and endorses it. They don't even need to attend the meeting, they just need to help us arrange it. This proposal cites the clear lack of criminality, that Jim is a victim of poor guidance and circumstance, and also cites the huge investment that the UK has made in the Iraqi governmental and judicial framework through FCDO funding in the past few years. We, and our lawyer, believe that this proposal has a high chance of success. But without the FCDO's engagement we will not be able to deliver it to the right people in time.
The second outcome is that Jim will go to sentencing court, currently anticipated to be sometime w/c the 8th of May 2022. At this point it will be too late to propose the cessation of the case as mentioned above. Our lawyer will fight for Jim as hard as possible and we will hope and pray that some way out can be found, but the law as written leaves no room for nuance, and if found guilty it appears that Jim will be sentenced to death.
I've been writing this for a good few hours and it's getting very late here so I may have failed to mention some small nuance, but these are the key points of the story as we know it, based on evidence we have seen and distributed to anyone who will listen.
There is one more point I'd like to tell you all about - Leila has not seen Jim for more than two years due to Covid travel restrictions. We held a small Covid wedding ceremony in Bath in August of last year for close friends and our British family members, mostly on my side. We have, since then, been planning a larger celebration in Malaysia with all of Leila's extended family. This is scheduled on the 8th of May. Obviously there is never a good time for something like this to happen but we are one week away from what should be the happiest day of our lives, and the culmination of more than two years of planning, and it's been turned into an absolute living nightmare. We have accepted the fact that, without timely intervention from the FCDO, Jim will be unable to attend this ceremony too.
Thanks for sitting through all that. We have been completely overwhelmed by people asking us what they can do to help, and are eternally grateful. We ask nothing else of you other than to continue to support us, to share this as widely as you are able, to not let this story die in the news cycles, and if it isn't too much trouble to write to your MPs and express your discontent and the urgent need for action. We have a very short window to get the foreign office to engage with us before it is too late to avoid the sentencing. Our fervent hope is that we can have Jim home safe and sound before it's too late.
Thank you all, again, so much.
Leila, Josh, Sarijah and Sam