One Week With John Gulliver - 20 years on, Trelford recalls Bazoft
I HAD in mind what I thought would make a telling picture – a photograph of Donald Trelford, the ex-editor of the Observer, sitting or standing in his Islington home next to five box files.
They contain press cuttings, letters and other documents about Farzad Bazoft, a young freelance journalist whose copy about the Iraq-Iran war was used by the Sunday newspaper.
This week is the 20th anniversary of the week when Bazoft, 31, was falsely accused of spying and hanged in Baghdad. The Observer appealed against the sentence, politicians appealed, world figures appealed, but to no avail.
Eventually, the British consul in Baghdad was summoned to the infamous Abu Ghraib prison and informed that Farzad would be hanged in one hour only to discover that the prisoner had not been informed.
As a journalist I too once upset another government and fell into the hands of its security police, but was treated much more civilly.
Perhaps it is this, I don’t know, but the terrible tragedy that befell Farzad has always stayed with me. Trelford wrote about the events in Sunday’s Observer but last week went on holiday.
He rang me on Tuesday and we discussed Farzad’s tragic death. He was sorry he wouldn’t be at home this week for a picture of the five box files.
They obviously mean so much to him.