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Proceedings for the new appeal were announced to start on 30 January

1961. 924 During the proceedings a letter by Smith, Bahrain’s Secretary to the

Government, officially requested the Political Agency on 7 March that the prisoners

be returned to Bahrain. 925 The request was not granted and the three prisoners

were ordered to be freed by Justice Myles John Abbott the Acting Chief Justice of St

Helena on 13 June 1961. Since Al-Shamlan’s application for habeas corpus was

upheld the other two prisoners were granted the same ruling. The hearing for the

case was held for three days in what The Guardian described was a crowded

Supreme Court.

The loophole that was applied to free the prisoners on their second appeal

was that the men were handed over to the Captain of the HMS Loch Insh at 6.00 am,

and not at 4.00 am as had been stated in Sheridan’s letter, with a warrant that

authroised their deportation. However the Order in Council that provided authority

for the warrant was published on the Political Agency announcements’ board at 8.00

am, two hours after they had been taken aboard the ship. A copy of the pro forma

that was submitted to the Captain of the ship, according to the newspaper, was

retrieved. It was then used as the primary evidence to free the prisoners. 926

According to Murad, a former member of the NUC, the document had been retrieved

by an unnamed friend from the Adviserate, later the Secretariat, who copied the

document that was submitted to HMS Loch Insh and it had included the time at

924 ‘Justice v. Politics’, The Observer, 18 June 1961, 36.
925 TNA, CO 1026/238, Smith to Political Agency, 7 March 1961.
926 TNA, CO 1026/240, Judgment, 13 June 1961; and ‘3 Bahreinis Freed: Judge’s ruling on St Helena’,
The Guardian, 14 June 1961, 9.

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