Notebook
When Astrid Proll was arrested M London SIX weeks ago she was said to be the woman who had helped Meinhof to rescue Baader from prison in 1971. An application was made for her extradition by the West German government — the charge is attempted murder of two policemen, for which she was originally arrested in Germany. Extradition Proceedings were expected to begin by the middle of this month, but the start of the case is now likely to be delayed until early December, almost three months after Miss Pro11's arrest. (She was remanded in custody again this week, an application for bail having been adjourned). A three-month wan in Brixton prison for a suspected Baader-Meinhof terrorist may not rouse i many people to angry demonstration, but t does credit neither to the West German government nor to our system of justice. It IS quite unreasonable for the Frankfurt Public prosecutor, having begun Miss Proll's trial in 1973, now to take so much time before presenting again the case which i was presumably well enough prepared n the first place. (That trial was never concluded because of Miss Pro11's ill-health, and she absconded from a hospital in 1974). And the Bow Street magistrate should not indulge the German authorities in this way. The last notorious foreign suspect to be arrested in this country was James Earl Ray, who was extradited to the US in 1968 for the murder of Martin Luther King. The Proceedings for his extradition were completed within a month of his arrest.
An Unseemly correspondence has been taking place in The Times, principally between Lord Boothby and Sir John Colville, over their respective relationships with Sir Winston Churchill. In the past week three absurdly long letters have been published Which have done no more than make the following 'points': Colville: 'I knew Churchill better than you did.' Boothby: 'No you didn't'. Lady Soames (Churchill's daughter): 'Yes he did'. So what?
Not best known for its foreign news, the Sunday Express appeared to have the story of the overthrow of President Boumedienne of Algeria all to itself. But early last week he turned up in Moscow, still at the head of his country's government, though leaving behind him rumours that he had been wounded in the course of an attempted coup d'etat. The strength of any 93Position to Boumedienne within Algeria IS of course unknown — there has been only one reported challenge to his position since he came to power in 1965 — but several former FLN leaders in exile may still have the influence necessary to supplant Boumedienne. Of the 'historic nine' who began the Algerian revolution in 1954 only four are still alive: Ben Bella, Rabah Bitat, Hocine Ait Ahmed and Mohamed Boudiaf. Ben Bella has been in prison or under house arrest for the past thirteen years since Boumedienne replaced him as president (he has been detained for more than twenty-one of his sixty-two years); Bitat is now President of the Algerian Assembly. Ait Ahmed escaped from prison in Algeria in 1966 and may be living in Spain; Boudiaf was sentenced to death in absentia by an Algerian court and is now in Morocco, from where he was making predictable noises last week about his country's economic bankruptcy. Ait Ahmed and Boudiaf were both interned with Ben Bella in France for much of the war, but they fell out with him after he became Algeria's first president in 1962. If Boumedienne's regime is in danger of being overthrown, one of the clues to the source of the threat may lie in a bank in Switzerland which holds about £6 million of FLN funds. Mohamed Khider, another of the 'historic nine', was 'treasurer' of this money which, after 1962, was to be used to finance opposition to Ben Bella. He remained in exile when Ben Bella was overthrown, and he was shot dead in Madrid in 1967; in a subsequent legal action Boumedienne's government failed in their claim to the money. It was said that the money belonged to Khider, as the account was in his name; but he may have bequeathed control of the fund to one or more fellow exiles to continue the fight against the Algerian government.
The laws of libel are in a parlous state. There was a time, about twelve years ago, when an award to a successful plaintiff of 'substantial' damages (in the jargon of lawyers) could mean as little — as it appears now — as £500. And in any libel action you could make a reasonably accurate guess at the amount of damages which a jury might award as compensation for injury to a person's reputation. But today the sums are so unpredictable and so high as to deter all but the mostfoolhardy defendants from putting their case before a jury. Last week a man who drew four cheques which were returned to the payees marked 'account closed' was given £50,000 by a jury for the damage to his reputation. And similar sums will be awarded for as long as the burden of justifying a libel is always on the defendant and it is left to a jury to fix the damages. A man is poor indeed when his good name is filched from him, or so said Iago. But even he would surely not have intended that the poor plaintiff should be so grossly enriched at the expense of the defendant. Three years ago the Faulks Committee proposed that the judge should assess the sum of damages within a category — substantial, moderate or nominal — to be decided by a jury. This would be a useful reform to be going on with — it would reduce the present level of damages and make it easier for a defendant to assess his risk in advance — but the committee's report has, predictably, got no further under a Labour government. The only hope for reform of the libel laws lies with the Conservatives who are less sensitive to criticism.
Misprints — which are not unknown in this paper —occur with such irritating frequency in several daily newspapers that, while occasionally humorous, they may distort the drift of an argument or the meaning of a sentence (or indeed an entire report). There can scarcely have been a more unfortunate example than that which crept last week into The Times's report of the verdict at the second inquest into the death of the Geordie electrician, Liddle Towers, who died in 1976 from injuries allegedly received at the hands of several police officers. The original verdict of 'justifiable homicide' had been quashed by the Divisional Court and was replaced by 'death by misadventure' at the end of the second hearing. But it appeared in The Times as 'death by adventure', which, being interpreted, was roughly what the supporters of the campaign for Mr Towers had been seeking to establish. Surely the great journal of record should puethe record straight?
October has been a remarkable month, the weather so fine that a few young swallows were still around last week-end. And the tad' summer has given us a better crop of apples and plums — particularly damsons — than I can remember. (It must also be a record year for conkers). But down in Berkshire the ground is now so dry that wheat drilled two weeks ago has still not germinated. Every year the seasons seem to bring new surprises.
Simon Courtauld
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