Fairbairn in the tropics
Anthony Mockler
She looked over her shoulder as if fearful, even in her own guesthouse, of spies. It is a very common precaution in the Seychelles nowadays. 'Tell me, M'sieu An- thony,' she hissed. 'They are saying a QC is coming to defend these mercenaries, a big man — a big man, yes, froin Scotland Yard.' Small in size,' I told her, 'but big, yes, in — er — reputation.'
In due course Nicholas Fairbairn QC, MP, and lately Her Majesty'.s Solicitor General for Scotland arrived — and he has not disappointed the slightly confused local expectations. Almost daily he holds a Cap- tain Hook-style court at the Pirates' Arms, the social hub of the tiny capital of Vic- toria, astounding even the brash South African press corps with his scathing verbal assaults on the regime of President Rene and all its works and deeds. He was by sheer force of personality the dominating figure in the mercenary trial here. 'I'm the only man the ghastly government of this appall- ing Socialist paradise is afraid of,' he pro- claims. It is hard to deny what he says.
But for all that Nicholas Fairbairn has been a very worried man. 'It's a great responsibility to have five men's lives on one's hands, you know. I never want to see another effing palm tree as long as I live.' Almost every day Fairbairn goes up to the military camp in the hills to visit his 'clients' and comes back alternately manic or depressive. 'I asked this baboon of a major to show me their accommodation today. I thought Scotland's jails were bad enough, but I've never seen anything like this. No light, no air to speak of — in this heat too — solitary confinement, handcuffed day and night — here, look, hands high up behind their backs like this. A bit of fish and rice thrown in. They have to scrabble for it on the floor.. "Hee hee," the big monkey said, "what do you think of our fine hospitality?" "You bastard," I told him, "I'd like to see you spend just one night in those conditions."'
As for the trial itself, it was attended by an official observer from the OAU, an opulent lady with shapely arms, a variegated wardrobe and the highly suitable name of Madame Esther Tchoota Moussa. She spent all her time in court leafing through illustrated French magazines and left before the end. Presumably the wigs and gowns, the trotting out of Item A which becomes on identification Exhibit B, the nervous suggestions of a youthful At- torney General playing with little conviction the role of People's Prosecutor — none of this amounted to what the OAU had ex- pected, the drama of vitriolic denunciations of `mercenarismo', with quivering specimens of the genus under armed guard in the dock, as happened at Luanda so satisfactorily six years ago. Had Madame Esther been here early last December she would no doubt have found herself in more exhilarating surroundings. Ten thousand Seychellois demonstrated to cries of 'Hang the hired killers. Death to Mancham!' — or so the government-controlled newspaper the Nation reported the next day. The Na- tion usually carries a worthy slogan at its masthead. Yesterday's, for instance, an- nounced that 'Our Point of Departure Must Be to Serve the People Wholeheartedly and Never for a Moment Divorce Ourselves from the Masses'. After the mass rally platitude was abandoned in favour of a rather black form of wit. 'The Only Good Mercenary is a Dead Mercenary,' the
`You'll just have to leave one behind.'
masthead proclaimed, only to add 'Let Us Make Them All Good Ones.'
Fairbairn argued that after this sort of publicity there could never be a fair trial particularly as, if the figures were correct, half the potential jurors on the island must have attended the mass demonstration. 'Ye- es,' murmured the Chief Justice. 'Well, Mr Fairbairn, I think we had better adjourn whilst I consider this delicate point. Will tomorrow morning be agreeable?' The Chief Justice considered and rejected it as he had with equal courtesy considered and rejected the defence's other major point: that treason cannot be committed by aliens.
What Mr Fairbairn might have ap- preciated is the virtue of having a trial at all. In the first flush of 'victory' at the rally of 6 December only two weeks after Mike Hoare's failed attack on the airport, Presi- dent Rene announced that the will of the people must not only prevail but must be seen to prevail, and the mercenaries would therefore be tried by a People's Court. Ap- parently both bishops, Anglican and Catholic, added their protests to those of the judiciary, the Bar and indeed the High Commission. So at least there has been a proper trial, properly conducted — and it was Fairbairn's own decision that his clients should plead guilty that has kept it all so very low-key and made the mercenaries themselves such shadowy figures.
Not quite as low-key as he would have wished, however. The one accused who refused to be his client, Martin Dolincheck, by pleading not guilty gave the Government the pretext it had needed for at least something of a show trial, with exhibits of weapons, tapes, flight-plans, noble local soldiery, etc. After two weeks of general boredom both inside and outside the cour- troom, Dolincheck was inevitably but fairly found guilty by unanimous verdict of the jury on Monday. It was Dolincheck, though, who added the touches that occa- sionally lightened this somewhat artificial event. 'I am not a mercenary and I will never be one because it is below my dignity,' he proclaimed. 'I am a profes- sional intelligence officer.' He described his fellow mercenaries as 'a bunch of drunkards', which they did not appreciate. And in describing their reaction to his words he posed problems for the court in- terpreter faced with putting into Creole such phrases as 'Those guys who had threatened me with a zap off, they were skimmering — a good Afrikaans word'. But Dolincheck who (to use a good English word) was grovelling at the end — 'I can only hang my head in shame ... I offer my hand of brotherly friendship ... from now on my place will be in the ranks of the anti- apartheid forces to save Africa from a cer- tain holocaust' — managed to save himself. Sentences have been handed down: death for four men and 20 years' imprisonment for Dolincheck. But here amid a friendly and peaceful people it is impossible, at least as yet, to envisage the actual carrying out of what still seems a macabre eventuality.
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