Vigil for whistleblower Melanie Shaw

 Report from Wilhelm Kaiser April 5

Vigil for Melanie Shaw went Well today, around 50 people marched to the prison after listening to an hour of speeches in Peterborough town centre. We then visited to park outside the prison for a half hour before moving onto the prison proper and Mickey Summers entered to discuss a few things

Report from Mickey Summers

Sodexo prison Peterborough yesterday ; . . .

We held the vigil for Melanie Shaw and got confirmation that she is in solitary confinement and basically incommunicado.

As I have (a long time ago) been in the system and based on some of the info shouted back to us I made a decision along with Wendy Hirst to go into the visitors entrance to exercise a citizens rights to demand to speak with a prison Governor.

Because of the vigil outside the prison the prison officers were not amused that we came into the building we were immediately confronted by a thug / bully prison officer that totally cracked me up with his aggressive confrontational tactics with threats that he personally would physically remove me from the building ,

For those unaware these people rely on their tactics of creating so much fear and intimidation that people back down , what he got was the opposite , they did not like it because Wendy Hirst had taken the precaution to have someone video what was going on , I for one was not in fear or felt intimidated even when he tried getting his baton out of the clip on his belt as a threat

We did get a prison Governor despite the confrontation , we did not get the answers to the questions raised but that's ok.

Like I said earlier I know from my past how the system works and later this morning I shall meet with David Hollas Chair of the Nottingham Csa Inquiry Action Group to follow through with the following

1. A complaint of threatening behaviour by the prison officer to Cambridgeshire Police

2. To get the details of the Lay Persons visiting scheme , these are often referred to as visiting magistrates who looking at mediation in regard to inmate related issues , whilst we will probably not get a resolution we will get this logged and can and will be raised at the eventual inquiry.the lay person would in law have to come back with a written reply for the record

3. There will be a need to try to liase with Sodexo to create under the legal visits system for representative(s) of the Nottingham CSA inquiry action group the equivalent of a legal visit where there is no monitoring or interference of due process , this will also look at the issue of NOT allowing a McKenzie friend access to Melanie , I know that this can happen as I got a similar visit via the National Council For Civil Liberties many years ago

We are not going to get immediate overnight results it's a process but what we will have is a record of that process which we will be able to put forward to an eventual inquiry on an individuals case
　

Melanie has been in solitary confinement over 3 weeks held incommunicado we will get Wendy to update later.