James Saunders reports on how a phone call from a police station in London led to a trip to tribal Pakistan, where murder in the street, the Taliban and AK-47s were all par for the course


When Julia Bainbridge, a criminal defence solicitor at my firm, Saunders Solicitors, took a call asking her to represent a young man in custody at Paddington Green police station, she could hardly know that it would lead to her being hunted by the Taliban in the tribal area of Pakistan, helplessly watching a man dragged from his car and being murdered in the street, or cradling an AK-47 assault rifle, all on legal aid.



But as she listened to her client over the following two weeks of his interrogation on suspicion of terrorism, she realised that, if he was charged, the key evidence would be found in Pakistan.



Julia recently returned from an evidence-gathering trip to Pakistan, with fellow solicitor Brian Rose-Smith and trainee Prathna Bhojani, who went along with her more experienced colleagues because of her fluent Hindi and Urdu. The Saunders crime department is used to taking evidence in unusual or hostile circumstances, but this was in every sense new territory.



The three went to Pakistan to collect evidence for the trial of the young man who was arrested at a UK airport, make site visits and take witness statements on matters of fact and the client’s character. ‘Unfortunately, there were a few people we couldn’t trace,’ related Prathna in her diary of the trip. ‘But a total of ten witnesses were interviewed. We couldn’t have asked for a better outcome. It was imperative that we make the trip, so we were able to put to one side the fears of our families, colleagues and insurance companies.’



As well as amassing valuable evidence, it gave the three a sense of context, and was a humanising experience. Prathna’s journal of the trip records how the sights, sounds and smells of Pakistan proved intoxicating, from the mingling aromas of saffron and garlic in the dry, 40-degree heat, to the vision of a sea of cannabis plants. She took photographs, glimpsed President Musharraf in his car and enjoyed wonderful food, now and then having to remind herself that this was not a holiday.



On day one, immediately on touching down in Islamabad, they got straight to work, meeting their client’s family and interviewing two key witnesses. In the family home, on the second day, they ate ripe mangos and were touched by the sweetness of the fruit and sincerity of the family. Then they went to Rawalpindi to see a witness who had never been outside his native village. The next visit was to Darra, in the tribal area, which although abortive was to prove particularly memorable.



The small town of Darra lies some 35 kilometres south of Peshawar, provincial capital of Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province. The drive only takes a somewhat hairy 40 minutes, but Peshawar and Darra are otherwise worlds apart. The first is a beautiful, cultural, university city, for centuries a trading centre on the ancient Silk Road; the second, the birthplace of the Taliban and a hub for the arms and drugs trades.



In Darra’s main street, described by travel writer Geoffrey Moorhouse as ‘the noisiest in the world’, not just the blaring of klaxons and wheezing of air brakes, but the crack and rattle of gun fire assault the ears. Few women are to be seen at the roadside, just men and boys, some dismayingly young, toting sleek pistols and lethal-looking AK-47s. With the weapons factory and a gun bazaar doing brisk business, and with a try-before-you-buy policy at work, the gunshots you hear are ‘just’ prospective purchasers, loosing bullets into the air.



Or so you have to hope. For when the team from Saunders were driven into town, the first sight that greeted them was that of a man being dragged from his car and shot. There are no police here; the town is beyond the governance of state. Laws are laid down by tribal leaders, feuds abound, and ‘justice’ is summary. The populace are said to be warm and welcoming, but the dangers to outsiders are very real.



‘Our client’s brother had a friend in Darra with a firearms shop,’ recorded Prathna in her journal of the fifth day. ‘He had called him the day before and confirmed that, as long as we had our heads covered and went only to his shop, we’d be fine. Our car windows were curtained, so we couldn’t be seen, and as we approached the shop, we secretly filmed. The brother got out of the car, and we waited inside. Fortunately, before Brian could get out to do more filming, the now ashen-faced brother was back, telling us that we had to get out now. At the shop he had been told that the Taliban knew of our arrival. They would kill him and take Julia, Brian and me hostage. We sped off as fast as possible. Even the Pakistani men who were with us said they had never been so scared. This wasn’t “The Taliban may come”, it was, “They are coming. Run, run, run!”.’



Onwards then to the village of Bannu, where the men sat in one room, women in another, eating home-cooked food. ‘The people in this country are so hospitable,’ wrote Prathna, soon forgetting the nightmare of Darra. ‘Everyone came from miles around to look at Julia and me. The boys, speaking Urdu, asked a million questions. What was London like? What was India like? They thanked me for talking to them, and said that if I were Pakistani, it would never happen; boys can’t freely talk to girls.’ In part, the reason for visiting Bannu was to photograph a location material to the case. As Julia and Prathna stood in the required location to be photographed by Brian, the local boys handed them each an AK-47 to make a better photograph. ‘It seemed impolite to refuse.’



On the drive back to Peshawar, within sight of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, Prathna gazed out at the endless mountains, reflecting that Osama Bin Laden was rumoured to be hiding in a cave somewhere there. ‘He’ll never be found,’ she wrote. ‘So many mountains. So many caves. It would take a lifetime to search through it all.



‘After our return from Darra, the family were so grateful that we’d been. They said they’d been praying for our safe return. I can’t express how nice they are. Perhaps we don’t think enough of the client’s families, except when making bail applications.’



In Muree, in sight of the line of control between the Indian and Pakistani-controlled Kashmiri territories, and alleged to be a hot-bed of terrorist recruitment, the three took to horseback to find witnesses in rough terrain. ‘Being on horseback was not only fun, but also a good way to get to speak to the locals. If I had approached them as a lawyer from inside an air-conditioned car, I could not have hoped for the same straight answers.’



Even in regulatory work, you sometimes have to be careful who you stand next to. Last year, Andrey Kozlov, deputy chairman of the Bank of Russia and a witness in a Financial Services Authority case we were handling for a Russian bank, was gunned down on the streets of Moscow.



We did a risk assessment for the Pakistan trip on the risks of getting shot, kidnapped for ransom, falling ill and so on. There is not much you can do about getting shot in bandit country, apart from being sensible – a police escort and body armour just mark you as a target – but we insured against ransom and illness, bought the women traditional Islamic clothing, and everyone had the jabs. The Legal Services Commission refused to cover these costs, saying we would have to justify them on taxation – likewise entry visas. You do not do legal aid work for the money, but it really is insulting to be told they will not pay for the inevitable concomitants of a piece of work agreed to be necessary.



My firm has a strong commitment to publicly funded legal work, despite its main focus on regulatory matters. Given the risks of being shot or held to ransom by the Taliban, that is just as well.



James Saunders is senior partner of London firm Saunders Solicitors