Interview by Kristian Whittaker
Anti-apartheid activist KERRY BROWNING was acquitted by a Canberra jury on July 4 on all charges related to the alleged fire-bombing in 1988 of cars belonging to the South African and US embassies. Browning, who for more than two years was under virtual house arrest, was convicted on a charge of writing a threatening letter to the US ambassador. She was interviewed for Green Left by KRISTIAN WHITTAKER.
After being found innocent by the jury on all the major charges, what were your thoughts when the guilty verdict on the last minor charge was delivered?
The jury was out for over 24 hours, so this period was very stressful. The jury returned once to ask the chief justice what actually constitutes a "threat", and at that time I had some foreboding about the last charge.
The majority of the jurors were quite young. Most people somewhere along the line are taught that authority is there to protect our interests and are inexperienced about how intelligence organisations and the police work. Given the effect of the vast amount of resources the police had poured into the case, it was a frightening prospect for us.
The jury had a hard task. They had five weeks to consider the prosecution's case which was extremely monotonous and full of holes. The prosecution presented very small amounts of actual "evidence". From the police raids on my home, they attempted to build up a case that I was a woman who had unusual interests in hazardous chemicals and, married to the then chief representative of the Pan Africanist Congress, had a motive. They were trying to push the "politically motivated" line throughout, not that any of their "evidence" directly linked this with any of the charges.
A lot of this was simply thrown out by the judge, particularly anything to do with "terrorism". Which is why, when they opened their case, the prosecution did so by using extremely emotive language. They put such a colour to their opening that the jury was deemed contaminated and subsequently dismissed. With the second jury, the prosecution was more subtle.
Even so, my thoughts were, considering the threatening letter charge was so linked with the frame-up as a whole, how could the jury come to a guilty verdict on that last minor charge?
What was the background to that charge?
The fire-bombing charges were laid on October 17, 1988. Later, on November 22, that year, the threatening letter charge was laid. This was the prosecution's back-up charge, supposedly linking me directly with the fire-bombings.
Amid all the so-called "evidence" the jury had to examine, the threatening letter had a fingerprint on the top of it which was identified as mine and the opinion on the handwriting. The chief justice made it very clear that , there was nothing more than "probabilities" involved as to whether the handwriting was mine.
Therefore the jury could only have found me guilty on that through taking into consideration all the other charges and "evidence" — which was unrelated, but probably on their minds. Or else simply because of that single fingerprint. It took nine days before the fingerprint was specially enhanced. The usual period is two days.
A lot of people feel that the guilty verdict on the last charge was perhaps a compromise. I received an 18-month suspended sentence on that charge, with a three-year good behaviour bond. The maximum sentence possible would have been seven years for the threatening letter and 15 years for the other charges.
Are you appealing against the verdict on that last charge?
I am appealing against the verdict. The problem is, I've been advised I'll need $10,000 to $15,000 to finance the appeal, while we can't afford more than $3000 to $5000. We still owe over $30,000 from the committal hearings stage, but now I know I won't be sitting in Mulawa, I'll be able personally to take on repayment of a substantial amount of that debt. Support groups in Sydney and Melbourne will assist with fundraising.
We've put the call out for lawyers of conscience, who've been involved with cases of injustice and are willing to assist counsel with the reading and research for the appeal to the Federal Court. We believe this could cut a substantial amount off the costs.
There are definite disadvantages with appealing. I could lose and pay court costs on top of defence costs. The judges might even come down and sentence me more heavily. Or I might end up with a retrial.
And yet, I don't want to sit with a conviction of something I'm not guilty of. We know from Tim Anderson's case that if you've got convictions, the authorities will keep bringing them up to harass political activists who remain up front. If the police are vindictive, it's always possible they could set up some small scenario where I'm seen to break the conditions of the good
behaviour bond. In terms of travel, future employment and the way most of the media reported the verdicts not as, "Browning Found Not Guilty on Four Major Charges" but as, "Browning Guilty of Threatening US Ambassador", I'm still in the shadows as regards the community at large.
Also, it's not individual activists who are the real targets of frame-ups. They're attacking whole groups when they pick on an individual. They're attacking not just one, but all.
On principle, we want the verdict on that last charge reversed. And the only thing that will stop me is the court costs.
After the campaigns and recent verdict on Tim Anderson's case, and now yours, do you think the ability of foreign and domestic security agencies to get away with frame-ups has been set back?
Well, they've still got the bickies. It's nothing to them to spend a few million there through the state machinery if it helps to justify their presence and future activities and discredits left organisations. The court process means we have to run more to their agenda than to our own. Of course we have to defend these cases, but we can't allow this to be a simple way for them to disrupt us and distract us from our campaigns and political activism.
But we've also seen that this doesn't always work in their favour. There's been a lot of embarrassment there over Tim's case. With my case, there are probably a lot of disgruntled ASIO and police officers who would currently be blaming each other.
We have to use this experience in an educative way. Rather than allowing people to become frightened by this form of harassment, we have to be saying, well, we must be doing something right if this is the way they're reacting to our political agenda.
What's the possibility of Legal Aid funding your appeal?
It's difficult to get when you're not actually in jail or when your liberty is not under immediate threat. I was informed I had a 10% chance of being granted it.
It has been a difficult decision for me. Legal Aid funded most of my committal hearings defence, but when they didn't I incurred huge costs. They did fund the trial defence. The problem has been that the strain on funding which they operate under meant that situations arose where apparently while my case was running some other defendants were left without a Legal Aid lawyer. In the end, I decided I didn't want to go through that whole process of reapplying.