Friday 10 June 2022 10:46 PM After Jim Fitton's shattering sentence, his daughter tells REBECCA HARDY she ... trends now

Friday 10 June 2022 10:46 PM After Jim Fitton's shattering sentence, his daughter tells REBECCA HARDY she ... trends now
Friday 10 June 2022 10:46 PM After Jim Fitton's shattering sentence, his daughter tells REBECCA HARDY she ... trends now

Friday 10 June 2022 10:46 PM After Jim Fitton's shattering sentence, his daughter tells REBECCA HARDY she ... trends now

Leila Fitton is, as she says, ‘living my nightmare’. Today, her kindly, 66-year-old father Jim languishes in goodness knows what sort of hell in an Iraqi prison, where he has been condemned to serve a 15-year sentence for trying to smuggle so-called ancient artefacts — 12 pottery shards and stones — out of the country.

Leila, 31, has not been able to contact him since Thursday.

She is beside herself with worry, particularly because there has been no word from the British ambassador to Iraq nor from Foreign Secretary Liz Truss since Jim was arrested at Baghdad airport on March 20, despite frantic attempts from the family, including her mother Sarijah and 35-year-old brother Joshua, to contact them.

‘They are ignoring us,’ says Leila. ‘I don’t even know which prison he is in. Does he have a bed? Does he even have a mattress or is he on the floor? How crowded is it? Is he the only British man in there? How are the guards? Will he be able to have a few minutes on his phone to message us or will we be dealing with pay phones? Will we be able to talk to him at all? We don’t know.

‘I last spoke to him on Thursday before he was transferred from his holding cell. I’m sure he could hear my voice was wavering so he was being very calm and very strong for me. You can hear in his voice though — you know when someone starts a sentence but just kind of stops — he’s trying to gather himself and not be emotional.’

Retired British geologist James Graham Fitton pictured with his daughter Leila

Retired British geologist James Graham Fitton pictured with his daughter Leila

Leila takes a deep breath to stem the tears that have been falling since her father was found guilty of this crime on Monday.

‘You can’t compute it,’ she says. ‘You think, “There is no way in this world this can be happening.” Right now I’m living my nightmare. When I sleep I’ve been having good dreams of him coming home but then, when I wake up to reality and he’s not here, it breaks me every morning.’

Leila, who works in TV and film production, speaks to me from her parents’ home in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, where numerous stones and pebbles — souvenirs from their many trips around the world — fill the shelves.

They are much the same as the fragments Jim collected from a site in Eridu, south-east Iraq, with the permission of his tour guide as well as the knowledge of the Ministry of Tourism official and the security guard accompanying his party of six.

His family is now preparing an appeal but don’t have a clue if justice will finally prevail. None of what has happened in the last few months makes sense to Leila. ‘Shell-shocked’ is a word that crops up time and again during our emotional interview.

He has been condemned to serve a 15-year sentence for trying to smuggle so-called ancient artefacts (pictured) — 12 pottery shards and stones — out of the country

He has been condemned to serve a 15-year sentence for trying to smuggle so-called ancient artefacts (pictured) — 12 pottery shards and stones — out of the country

Leila and her husband Sam Tasker, 27, who live in Bath, were married in a small civil service in England last July but celebrated with a huge Malaysian ceremony a month ago. The three-day festivities had been planned for more than a year.

Heartbreakingly, instead of greeting the 4,000 guests as tradition decrees, her father Jim was many thousands of miles away incarcerated in an Iraqi holding cell.

Sam rubs his wife’s shoulder. ‘Even on the day that’s supposed to be the best day of your life, you’re still thinking about your dad, aren’t you?,’ he says. ‘You can’t stop those thoughts even for an hour.’ He looks at Leila who can only shake her head.

‘But he was online with you before the ceremony,’ says Sam. ‘I think it was the first time he said, “Love you”. Leila always says, “Love you”,’ Sam explains. ‘But he always goes offline. I think he gets emotional. But this time he said, “Love you”.’

Sam, who works for an outsourcing company, is trying with all his might to support Leila and her family. He is the ‘rock’ without whose support Leila says she would crumble.

Volker Waldmann, right, and Jim Fitton, center, are handcuffed as they walk to a courtroom escorted by police in Baghdad, Iraq

Volker Waldmann, right, and Jim Fitton, center, are handcuffed as they walk to a courtroom escorted by police in Baghdad, Iraq

He has enlisted the support of the local Liberal Democrat MP Wera Hobhouse, who has accused the Government of being ‘asleep at the wheel’, raised a change.org petition that urges the Foreign Office to intervene that now has more than 335,000 signatories and bangs on just about whatever door he can think to raise the profile of this appalling miscarriage of justice.

Indeed, it was the media, not the Foreign Office, who broke the news to Sam about Jim’s brutal 15-year sentence on Monday.

‘A journalist called me an hour after the verdict. That’s how I found out and that was pretty rough,’ he says. ‘Leila was in the bathroom. My heart just dropped as I thought, “I’ve got to tell my wife.”’

Leila takes his hand and squeezes it tightly. ‘He sat me down so I thought, “This is bad news. It’s probably going to be two years,”’ she says. ‘We’d thought he’d either be found innocent or, the lawyer said, at worst, one year suspended which would mean he’d be able to come home.

‘Then Sam said, “Fifteen years”. I think it kind of just blew over me. I didn’t cry — didn’t cry all day. In my mind I was thinking, “How the f*** do I tell my mum. How do I tell my brother?” Leila blushes as she curses. She’s not the sort of woman who swears easily.

‘Mum had just walked into the house. She’d bought some mangoes and was sitting at the table cutting them up. I called my brother because I didn’t know how to tell her.

‘When I said, ‘Fifteen years,’ he said. “Fine.’ Then he said, ‘How many?’ I said again, ‘It’s 15.’ He said, ‘No way.’

Mr Fitton (left) and Mr Waldman (right) are pictured from behind as they entered court

Mr Fitton (left) and Mr Waldman (right) are pictured from behind as they entered court

‘I went back into the sitting room and my mum was staring at me. I said, ‘Daddy’s not coming home.’ She was crying but I couldn’t tell her 15 years. I couldn’t. That’s when I tried calling my dad. He didn’t pick up. I think he was preparing himself. I thought, ‘I’ll try again’ so I called and he said . . . he said, “What a shame because . . . ” Leila breaks down.

Sam continues: ‘He said, “What a shame because our lawyer was so good. You must tell him he was so good. He couldn’t have done any better.”

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