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were unable to avoid the ‘allure of Egypt’. As to the reason for the two’s attraction

to the Egyptian sphere, Mehdi believed was ‘because “they wanted to be heroes in

the fight against Imperialism and loved to have their photographs in the Nationalist

magazines”’. 901

In St Helena a long legal battle to free the prisoners ensued. On 10 June 1958

Bernard Sheridan’s law firm on behalf of Al-Bakir submitted an application for a

writ of habeas corpus. 902 A document among TNA CO’s papers unnamed and

undated but archived among the records for the year 1958, suggested upon

acknowledgement that a writ of habeas corpus was applied by the prisoners that

It is important politically that the application should be rejected and
should not, therefore, be held in conditions in which it is likely to
succeed through inadequate defence.

Furthermore it was recommended that little publicity to the hearing was to be given

and ‘to avoid proceeding in such a way as to make the Colonial judicial system the

subject of legitimate attack’. It was also expected according to the paper that an

appeal to the verdict would be made to the Judicial Committee of the Privy

Council. 903

Nonetheless one of the earliest attempts to bring public awareness in Britain

to the plight of the three prisoners was when British filmmaker John Tunstall, hired

by the French Government to produce a film on St Helena, Napoleon Bonaparte’s

final place of exile, met the three men on the island. The meeting and first call to

901 TNA, FO 1016/551, W.J. Adams at Political Agency in Dubai to Residency, 17 June 1957.
902 In the Privy Council: On Appeal: From the Supreme court of St Helena (No. 43) (1959), The
Incorporated Council of Law Reporting for England and Wales, 1959.
903 TNA, CO 1026/188, St. Helena Prisoners: Venue for Hearing of Application for Writ of Habeas
Corpus.

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