Seventeen Years in Thai Prison

[Norseman]

Dorset Echo, UK - 16th May 2007
By Joanna Codd

A FORMER Poole man has been released from a Thai jail after serving more than 17 years for a crime he says he did not commit.

Alan John Davies, 66, arrived at Heathrow Airport to be met by friends, well-wishers and representatives of Fair Trials Abroad,
the organisation involved in the case since being alerted by the Daily Echo in 1995.

Businessman Mr Davies lived in Wellington Road, Parkstone, in the late 1980s, when he left the UK for Thailand.
He intended to visit his elderly mother in Poole in May 1990, but never saw her again.

Instead he was plunged into a nightmare when he and two other men were arrested at a Bangkok bank in January 1990 and charged with conspiracy to smuggle heroin.
From the outset, Mr Davies insisted he had been framed.

He was tried without the services of a court interpreter - although he could not at that stage speak the Thai language - and sentenced to death in 1994.
He was kept shackled in heavy leg irons until the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in 1996.

Mr Davies told supporters via his website: "It is not possible to describe just how I felt when I boarded the plane and departed from Thailand
after spending 17 years, four months and 15 days in various hell hole prisons and knowing... that I was at long last free."

He added that he was feeling conflicting emotions, including relief, anger, weariness, and bitterness.
"At least a quarter of my life, if I live beyond 70, has been stolen from me," he said.

Mr Davies, who suffered at least one stroke during his captivity, was due to speak at a press conference in the House of Commons this morning.
He was expected to go into details of alleged corruption by British and Thai officials.

Catherine Wolthuizen, chief executive of Fair Trials Abroad, said Mr Davies was now looking into the possibility of legal action.
"At the moment he is adjusting to life in the UK.
He's in remarkably good health, but even someone with such strength of character and optimism is going to find it difficult."

She added Mr Davies had been most looking forward to sleeping in a bed after spending the last 17 years on concrete floors.
"Conditions were very difficult. John has talked about having to sleep sitting up because the cells were so overcrowded.

"These places are very basic indeed with extremely limited medical care."