Rescued 'Slave' Criticises Police Raid At Bedfordshire Caravan Site

Man helped from Travellers' site brands Leighton Buzzard arrests 'rubbish' as nine men refuse to help investigation












Police guard the Greenacre caravan site in Leighton Buzzard.

The police investigation into a suspected slave camp at a Travellers' site in Bedfordshire has been challenged after nine of the 24 alleged slaves refused to help police with their inquiries.

One of the nine accused the police of heavy-handed tactics and described the five arrests as "complete rubbish".

Police insist that the four-month undercover operation has broken up an "organised crime group", and were questioning 15 alleged victims, who were being treated for malnutrition and other medical problems.

Police continue to question four men and are looking for two further suspects. One heavily pregnant woman, who is expected to give birth imminently, has been released on bail. No charges have yet been brought.

DCI Sean O'Neil, from the Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire major crimes unit, said: "Those people who we continue to help are appreciative of the support that is on offer, but it will take some time to work through with them what has happened."

He said he was confident the operation, called Operation Netwing, had broken up a criminal network.

Police have arrested suspects on slavery and servitude offences under section 71 of the Coroners and Justice Act.

"The new legislation has allowed the investigation more scope and takes into account emotional rather than physical harm," O'Neil said. "I am confident that while the investigation is in its early stages this is a family-run 'business' and is an organised crime group that has been broken up by the Netwing operation."

At the well-established Greenacre caravan park in Leighton Buzzard, which has 16 mobile homes, one of the men taken by police, who did not want to be named, said he had been living in a caravan on a Traveller plot for several years, working as a paver and was being paid £50 a day.

"I think it's all a load of rubbish and they just hate Travellers," said the man, who is in his 50s. "Plenty of men who were here wanted to be here and they were getting paid. The police coming in heavy-handed like this is just wrong."

More than 200 police officers raided the site in the early hours of Sunday, aided by a helicopter and dog patrols. Armed officers were also present.

Four men and a woman were arrested on suspicion of slavery offences, while 24 men were taken to a medical centre.

Police said the men had been kept as virtual slaves in appalling conditions, forced to work long hours doing physically demanding jobs without pay.

However, the man told the Guardian he had worked for 15 years with one Traveller family who had provided him with work and accommodation when he had nowhere else to go. After refusing to answer police questions he made his way back to the site.

He said: "The police told me I couldn't come back but I told them it was my home and if I wanted to go back I would go back."

Speaking at the door of her mobile home, one woman – who said she was the wife of one of the arrested men but did not want to be named – said the police claims were "ridiculous".

She added: "The men who were taken were getting paid £30 a day, they had somewhere to live, this is all a load of nonsense."

Police claimed the suspects lured vulnerable men from dole queues and homeless shelters to work at the site. But the woman said they came voluntarily because they knew Travellers would give work to men down on their luck.

"Isn't it better that they have a roof over their head?" she said. "What are they going to do now – when the police have finished with them they will be homeless. It's up to them how they kept their homes, but they could come and go whenever they pleased."

She accused the police of harbouring prejudices against Travellers. "It's complete lies and they are trying to make Travellers look bad. There are two sides to this story," she said.

A police spokeswoman said the 24 men taken from the site were being offered help: "We are giving help to all of the men, but if they do not want it then obviously we are not forcing them to take it."

Paul Donohoe, spokesman for Anti-Slavery International said that, although he could not comment on the details of this particular case, it was not unusual for victims of slavery to resist help from the authorities.

"We do often see the Stockholm syndrome coming into effect – it is not unusual for people who have been 'rescued' to psychologically identify with their enslavers."

Police said on Monday that of the 24 men taken from the site, nine had left the medical reception centre and had chosen not to support the police investigation.

The remaining 15 continue to be assessed for welfare and health needs, and would be interviewed by detectives. Police said it would take a number of days to establish exactly what had happened to them on the site.

Of the men helping police, eight are British, three Polish, one Latvian and one Lithuanian, with two men of unconfirmed nationality.

The youngest person to be found on site was 17. Police said he has rejoined his family.

John McAleese

John McAleese, who died on August 26 aged 61, led the SAS team that ended the Iranian embassy siege in central London in 1980, an event watched live on television by millions of spellbound viewers.












The SAS storming the Iranian embassy on May 5 1980.













John McAleese

The embassy, at 16 Princes Gate, Knightsbridge, had been taken over on April 30 1980 by six separatists from the oil-rich region in west Iran known as Arabistan. For six days, armed with machine guns, pistols and grenades, they held 26 people hostage as they demanded international recognition for their demands for independence.

Margaret Thatcher’s government was adamant that it would not make deals with terrorists, and as tense negotiations with the separatists continued, police surrounded the 56-room, five-storey building.

At the same time, an SAS team was assembled to launch a possible assault on the embassy under the code name Operation Nimrod.

Some 60 troops of 22 Special Air Service Regiment 56, among them then Lance-Corporal John McAleese, drove from their base in Herefordshire. They were equipped with ladders, climbing ropes and battering rams, as well as with machine guns, grenades and gas-canister launchers.

A few doors along from the embassy, the Royal School of Needlework was meticulously examined by one of the SAS soldiers, Stuart MacVicar (known as “Squash Ball” for his compact physique), because its layout was identical to that of the embassy.

Microphones were drilled into the embassy walls; commercial aircraft flying overhead were ordered to travel at lower altitudes, to drown out any suspicious noises caused by the preparations for an assault.

Meanwhile, the soldiers studied long-lens photographs, taken through the embassy windows, of the hostages in the hope that they would be able to distinguish them from their captors.

Then, on the evening of May 5, a team led by McAleese stormed the building. The assault had been ordered by the Home Secretary, William Whitelaw, after the terrorists killed a hostage and threw his body outside the building.

For the first time, an SAS operation was shown live on television as both ITV and the BBC (which interrupted its coverage of the final of the world snooker championships) broadcast footage of black-clad troops in balaclavas — among them McAleese — abseiling down ropes on to the balconies on the first floor of the embassy, where it was thought that most of the hostages were being held.

In order to disorientate the terrorists, the SAS first exploded a so-called “distraction” charge, which they had lowered through a skylight.

The front window of the room were blown out by McAleese and CS gas canisters fired in through the gap. The soldiers then stormed in amid a hail of gunfire.

The raid lasted 17 minutes. All but one of the hostages were rescued. Five of the terrorists were killed; the only one to survive, Fowzi Nejad, was sent to prison — he was released in 2008.

Returning after the assault to their temporary London quarters at Regent’s Park Barracks, the SAS team was visited by the Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who told them: “Makes us proud to be British.” McAleese later said: “We knew what our mission was — it was to release the hostages. My only job at this point is to get on to the balcony, place the charge, get back, blow it, turn around and go back in through the window.”

John McAleese was a Scot, originally from Laurieston, in Stirlingshire, and served in the Army for 23 years, including 17 in the SAS. He was awarded a Military Medal in 1988 for his service in Northern Ireland. After leaving, he worked as a security consultant in Iraq and Afghanistan, and had a brief media career as a host of the 2003 BBC series SAS: Are You Tough Enough?, a documentary in which members of the public experienced the proverbially gruelling SAS selection process.

He also acted as an instructor in Airsoft, the outdoor game which offers people a taste of what it is like to experience battle conditions. Participants dressed in combat gear and carrying real weapons (loaded with plastic BB pellets) mimic close-quarter modern infantry fighting.

McAleese said: “You might as well make it realistic. People read books about this SAS stuff and now they can do something similar.”

The last two years of McAleese’s life were marked by the death of his son, 29-year-old Sergeant Paul McAleese, who was serving in the 2nd Battalion the Rifles and hoped to join the special forces like his father before him. Paul was killed by an explosion in Afghanistan on August 20 2009 while attempting to rescue a wounded comrade.

After his son’s death, John McAleese appealed to the Prime Minister Gordon Brown for better resources for the troops serving in Helmand province. He said that his son had complained that there were not enough troops in Afghanistan to monitor areas for explosive devices.

John McAleese, who died in Thessaloniki, Greece, is thought to have suffered a heart attack.

As well as his son Paul, he had a daughter with his first wife. He also had a daughter and a son by his second marriage.