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free the men was chronicled in Reynold’s News weekly newspaper of 7 September

1958 in an article with several images of the prisoners in St Helena. Interestingly,

the newspaper reported that the initial habeas corpus application was unsuccessful

because of a technical issue: one of the relatives of the prisoners’ had failed to sign it

on their behalf. 904 This report corresponded with a claim made by Murad that early

in the process of defending the three, signatures were collected on behalf of the

three exiled men’s families, in order to allow for lawyers to represent them.

However one of the prisoners’ sons (whom he did not specify) had refused to sign it

for reasons unknown. There was no other choice left then but to forge his signature

to allow lawyers to represent his father and for the case to proceed. 905

The case proceeded and affidavits were collected from witnesses. Affidavits

were made by Al-Bakir on 15 October, Salem Al-Arrayed the Registrar of the

Bahrain Law Courts on 23 February 1959, Sir James D Harford (former Governor of

St Helena) on 26 February, Belgrave on 27 February, Patrick Truebody (the Senior

Sergeant of Police in St Helena) on 17 March, and Sir Robert Edmund Alford

(Governor of St Helena since 12 February 1958) on 17 March. On behalf of Sheridan

Ronald GM Brown was appointed to defend Al-Bakir.

The defence argued that Al-Bakir was unlawfully detained in St Helena. It

based its key points of defence on the following arguments: first that the prisoner

‘was never convicted by a court of competent jurisdiction’, despite having the Act

extended to include Bahrain ‘it cannot apply to the applicant because he was not

904 ‘New Hope for three St Helena Captives’, Reynold’s News, 7 September 1958, 9.
905 ‘Jassim Murad wa “Nishwar” Al-Sineen Al-Khamseen’ [Jassim Murad and the ‘Elegant Words’ of Fifty
Years], 9.

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