Who really murdered Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman?

 

Shortly after the arrests, British and American media organizations demonized Ian Huntley and Maxine Carr so successfully that public attention was diverted away from Lakenheath completely, and focused instead on the young couple from Soham who had earlier willingly spoken to television crews about their concerns for the well being of the two missing 10-year-old girls. Both knew the girls reasonably well. Ian Huntley was the caretaker at their school, and Maxine Carr was a former teaching auxiliary in their class.

Millions of viewers around the world watched Ian and Maxine being interviewed by the media, and most were impressed by the openness of their statements and their genuine willingness to help if possible. Experts in non-verbal communication also noticed that Ian and Maxine's involuntary body and eye movements perfectly matched what they were saying verbally to the journalists.

In other words, both appeared to be telling the truth both verbally and non-verbally, an almost impossible feat for even a trained liar to fabricate. It is critical to note here also that both came across on television as perfectly normal, sane individuals, a reality later to be inexplicably challenged by police and psychiatrists in Cambridgeshire.

If Huntley and Carr had been involved at all with the abduction and murder of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, would they have then been stupid enough to run the gauntlet of about 10,000 American servicemen en-route, and dump the two small bodies in a location clearly visible from Lakenheath Control Tower, taxi track, and main runway? A serviceman with detailed knowledge of activities and procedures inside the base might get away with it unseen, but certainly not two civilians from Soham in Cambridgeshire. So the perimeter would be an ideal dumping ground for American servicemen eager to return to "safe" territory at USAF Lakenheath, before either entering their barracks on the base, or catching a shuttle bus to USAF Mildenhall.

In an attempt to demonize Ian Huntley still further, police "leaked" the damning information that he had been arrested for rape a number of years earlier. Well, yes, almost. While still a teenager Huntley had consensual sex with his girlfriend, who was only 15-years-old at the time, an offence in the United Kingdom known as statutory rape. He was never charged with an offence however, and his former girlfriend [now age 21 years] recently confirmed it was a mutual crush [love affair], with enthusiastic sexual consent on both sides.

So for a while at least, police and media have managed to deflect attention away from the two massive nearby USAF bases at Lakenheath and Mildenhall, and the political minefield lurking just below the surface if the British public ever find out about the very large numbers of children abused, raped, and sometimes murdered by American servicemen on overseas duty. So let us properly consider the "American Connection," before returning later in this report to the unbelievable ongoing psychological abuse of Ian Huntley and Maxine Carr.

Though earlier in the investigation police declared they would be interviewing "700 known sex offenders" of British nationality, there was no mention of interviewing the 10,000+ US servicemen based in close proximity to Soham Village, or determining which other American servicemen have transited through the two bases, and on which flights, since Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman first disappeared.

The simple fact that Holly and Jessica's bodies were found within yards of the USAF Lakenheath perimeter fence, which in turn provides access to the American barracks within, should have had British police knocking on Lakenheath's front door immediately. Unfortunately, any such action might have accidentally undermined Prime Minister Tony Blair's personal slavish dedication to George W Bush's "War on Terror."

Though most members of the American military are unquestionably nice people, the small number who are not, are invariably psychotic savages. It is a matter of public record that many American servicemen have habitually carried out sickening attacks against civilians while on overseas duty, happy in the knowledge that the serious assault or murder of women or girls in Japan, Kosovo or England, carries a lesser penalty than at home.

One such case is that of Staff Sergeant Frank Ronghi, who on 24 August 2000 pleaded guilty to sodomizing and killing an 11-year-old Kosovar girl in January the same year. A member of his platoon testified that Staff Sergeant Ronghi disdainfully claimed, "It's easy to get away with this shit in a third-world country."

The "shit" Ronghi referred to is described here by the US Army Pathologist for Europe. "Her right jaw was fractured, practically bisected," said Lieutenant Colonel Kathleen Ingwersen, "We found evidence of sperm and semen in her vagina, mouth and rectum," she testified to a hushed hearing. "There was trauma to the neck muscles, the trachea and the carotid artery," Colonel Ingwersen said, adding she had found evidence of "blunt trauma" as the child was apparently beaten, choked and forced to kneel, face to the ground, as she was sodomized.

But in a perverse way Ronghi was proved right about the overall American perception of  the "lesser worth" of women and children, in what he and others continually refer to as the third world.  At his trial the Staff  Sergeant was sentenced to life imprisonment, despite the fact that an identical offence against an American woman in the USA, would have resulted in his execution.

It would be impossible to list here all such vile attacks against "locals" by American servicemen overseas because there have been far too many. However, in order to educate the British police [who mercifully are rarely exposed to similar atrocities in Cambridgeshire and Suffolk] it seems prudent to mention a handful, thereby proving that Staff Sergeant Ronghi is far from being an isolated case.

In 1955, an American soldier was sentenced to death for the murder of  a six-year-old Okinawan girl, a sentence that was later commuted to life imprisonment. During 1966 a US soldier confessed to strangling a young waitress. Then in 1972, US soldiers were sentenced to life imprisonment for strangling local women. Later In 1975, a US soldier was sent to prison for raping two junior high school students. Local Okinawan police arrested two US soldiers during 1985 in the act of raping a woman.

During a spate of crimes in 1995, a US soldier was arrested for the hammering death of a young woman, two children were killed by a drunken soldier, and three US soldiers brutally raped a young schoolgirl.

In January 2000 a US seaman was sentenced for sexually assaulting a 16-year-old Japanese girl. Remember this is only a small part of the overall list, nor does it include the many more alleged perpetrators who Japanese and other authorities claim were "spirited out of the country and back to the USA" before they could be apprehended and charged.

The last point to consider before returning to the plight of Ian Huntley and Maxine Carr, is the strange fate of four wives at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, the former home base of Staff Sergeant Ronghi. All four wives were allegedly killed by their Sergeant husbands when they returned from active duty in Afghanistan, during the same week that Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman went missing. US Army authorities are currently trying to establish whether or not an anti-malarial drug all were taking contributed to the murders. The drug is acknowledged to have extra-pyramidal psychotic side-effects, and is prescribed to all US Servicemen in Afghanistan.

There are no direct flights out of Afghanistan to the USA, meaning that all American servicemen including those seriously affected by the drug, and also affected by PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) are obliged to change aircraft either in Germany or in England - normally at USAF Mildenhall. As a matter of urgency the British public should shame their local police into establishing accurately how many of these servicemen transited through USAF Mildenhall and USAF Lakenheath during the week that Holly and Jessica vanished.

Initially on Saturday 17 August, Ian Huntley and Maxine Carr were arrested "on suspicion" of being involved in the murders of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman. Each was taken to a different police station in Cambridgeshire for interrogation, which is standard police procedure. However, this is also the point at which standard police procedure vanished completely. Obviously Ian and Maxine were determined to protest their innocence, and refused to provide police with a convenient "confession," no matter how tired they were, and no matter how much extreme pressure was applied by the big burly threatening policemen. There was also a marked absence of defence lawyers making statements on behalf of the suspects.

In an extraordinary move, police then applied to a "Closed Court" for an extension of Huntley and Carr's detention, though the reasons were not made public. There was actually no need for police to provide us with a reason, because it was blatantly obvious they still had absolutely nothing to connect the two suspects with the two murders. If at that stage police had any hard evidence linking Ian Huntley or Maxine Carr to the murders, or had managed to coerce a confession out of either, they would have been charged immediately.

Then on Tuesday 20 August, just twenty-four hours before the legally extended detention was due to expire at 6.19 am on Wednesday, a complete team of psychiatrists appeared as if by magic, and deemed that Ian Huntley was unfit to appear in court. He was then "sectioned" under the Mental Health Act 1983 and remanded to Rampton high-security psychiatric hospital, at Retford in North Nottinghamshire, without being charged with any offence.

Now think about this carefully people, think about it! When we all saw Ian Huntley on international television he was entirely coherent and unquestionably sane. But apparently, after a mere three days in police custody, he became insane. How? Did the police deprive him of sleep and induce a [predictable and natural] nervous breakdown, or are the all-too-convenient government psychiatrists a pack of liars? You choose ...

One thing is certain. We have all just watched the gross violation of Ian Huntley's legal and human rights on international television, and we have done absolutely nothing about it. Ask yourself: Is it even legal to section a man in England under the Mental Health Act before he is charged? When asked this precise question, Dr Harris of Rampton Psychiatric Hospital was evasive, replying, "It is not unheard of, but it is very unusual."

Once inside the terrifying Rampton building, a Victorian hulk originally founded as an asylum in 1912 under the Criminal Lunatics Act of 1860, police charged Ian Huntley with murder. He is now at the mercy of a five-man psychiatric team who will assess his "symptoms" night and day over the next month, and shove him full of God-knows-what medication. This is the Gulag Archipelago all over again, and Joe Stalin would have loved it.

If, after a full month at the hands of the medical nutters in Rampton, Ian Huntley should choose to "confess" to everything including the murder of the Princess of Wales, try not to believe him. Stalin's enemies used to confess all the time in the Gulag, but only after being pumped full of Reserpine by the shrinks.

The next problem for police was Maxine Carr. Clearly no-one would believe that two people had suddenly gone completely insane in police custody at the same time, so senior officers in Cambridgeshire [and at the Home Office] had to think of something a little more creative. They knew Huntley and Carr were both innocent of course, but somehow Maxine had to be brought under control. In other words Maxine Carr had to be so badly frightened that she would be positively eager to "cooperate" with police when the drugged, perhaps electro-shocked and certainly docile Ian Huntley was finally paraded in front of the courts.

So police formally charged Maxine Carr with "attempting to pervert the course of justice," i.e., lying to police whether she had or not, and quietly arranged to have her incarcerated in the most brutal and terrifying of Britain's women's prisons, at Holloway in London. "Attempting to pervert" is not a violent crime requiring a high security establishment of course, and there were certainly prisons closer to Soham, but only Holloway would have the desired devastating effect on Maxine, hopefully bringing her under immediate control.

Although the Victorian Holloway was replaced in a phased rebuilding programme between 1975 and 1985, it has managed to retain its brutal reputation. In 1995 Sir David Ramsbotham, then inspector of prisons, walked out in disgust at the conditions he found inside. He noted that 75% of women at the jail were suffering from some form of identifiable mental disorder, while one in 10 was suicidal. Almost half were drug addicts in need of immediate detoxification, while more than half had serious alcohol problems and nearly 95% were on sleeping pills.

Naturally enough, on its own this would be quite enough to send a quiet country girl like Maxine insane in weeks, but the British authorities wanted to make absolutely sure. So before she left for London, police arranged a court hearing for her in the local town of Peterborough, and made sure the media and "rent a mob" people knew about its exact timing well in advance.

As the police van approached the court, the commotion started for the innocent woman not yet convicted of any offence at all. Unseen hands banged on the metal van, and several females led an ugly chorus, jeering and shouting at a woman they could not see - a thick grey blanket had been placed over Maxine Carr's head - for a double murder with which she has not even been charged. "Evil bitch," screamed one. "Sick cow," spat another. In the melee, a woman and her two daughters unfurled a home-made banner. "Rot in hell forever," it said.

Trial by television media had well and truly started, and the trembling Maxine Carr had not yet even reached that special part of hell called Holloway. But a week or two in there with the deranged and the druggies should have her "cooperating" with anything and everything the Cambridgeshire Police Service wants.

But is that really the point here? The Chief Constable and all of his officers at Cambridgeshire Constabulary should be mortally ashamed of their blatant abuse of police powers, abuse of the judicial process, and abuse of the Mental Health Act. In turn it goes almost without saying that we the public should not believe a word of any subsequent "confession" that Maxine Carr is coerced into making, during or after her terrifying ordeal at Holloway.

Nor should we necessarily believe that the little Cambridgeshire Constabulary [1,307 proud officers and still recruiting] had the overall power to pull off these impressive stunts without some very heavy political assistance. Think about it carefully. The original players in a tight little Cambridgeshire county investigation have been scattered to the four winds. Ian Huntley is 100 miles away to the north in Rampton, Nottinghamshire, and Maxine Carr is 100 miles away to the south in Holloway, London. The bodies of the girls were actually found in Suffolk, directly involving a third force, the Suffolk Constabulary. And oh, yes, police investigators from the Norfolk Constabulary did quite a lot of the leg work on this case.

So the Cambridgeshire Holly and Jessica Case, is no longer really the Cambridgeshire Holly and Jessica case at all, is it? The only people who will know exactly what is going on in London, Nottinghamshire, Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire in the future, will be the small group of powerful manipulators who set the scene. This is the same small group who had sufficient power to arrange special closed courts, send a truckload of wobbly shrinks to Cambridgeshire, subvert the Mental Health Act, and personally arrange the twin hells of Rampton and Holloway for suspects Ian Huntley and Maxine Carr. Believe me, only senior bureaucrats at the Home Office in London have sufficient raw power to arrange all of this.

There is a final point to consider about the case itself. A newspaper report states "The bodies of murdered 10-year-old girls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman were discovered in a 'severely decomposed and partially skeletonised' state, and the pair were almost certainly not killed where they were discovered, a coroner's inquest was told yesterday. Their remains were found last Saturday in woodlands outside a United States air base at Lakenheath, Suffolk." (Even now, the cause or place of death cannot be established, and the Coroner has released the bodies to the parents for burial.)

The reason for the importance of this statement will be obvious to residents in the Lakenheath area, whose local newspapers have saturated them for weeks with the information that Ian Huntley and Maxine Carr once lived years ago in a house owned by relatives less than a half-mile away from where the bodies were found. So this information allowing police to "point the finger" at the pair has long been in the public domain, and would be of enormous value to anyone wishing to deflect attention away from the real killers. Adding real substance to this claim is the fact that the path beside which the bodies were located is well used by walkers, but the bodies were not "found" until the very morning of Ian Huntley and Maxine Carr's arrests.

Now ask yourself what you would do if you were Ian Huntley and had really been involved in the murder of the two little girls. Would you deliberately move their bodies close to a residence that you had lived in some years before, thereby tacitly pointing the finger of guilt at yourself, or would you move the bodies well away from any such residence? You choose, though even a deranged person in Rampton or Holloway should be able to select the correct answer to this elementary question.

Taking the opposite view, what would you do if you were a deranged American serviceman who managed to smuggle the two little girls inside USAF Lakenheath, and then murdered them at some remote location inside the very large airfield boundary, with its multitude of convenient empty buildings? Would you leave the bodies where they lay until the smell of putrefaction attracted the attention of the Military Police at the base, or would you toss the pathetic remains over the perimeter fence one dark night, as close as possible to the former Huntley residence you learned about in the local Suffolk newspaper, and then tip off police? Once again, you choose.

No matter what you choose and no matter what you think, it will probably make no difference to the final outcome. The atmosphere surrounding this case is so heavily laden with political fog that you could cut it with a knife. At the national level you cannot afford to rock the boat because of Tony Blair's "special relationship" with the White House, and all this entails for his personal prestige and the "War on Terror." That said, Tony Blair's wife Cherie is apparently a leading human rights lawyer, who might decide to take independent personal action where this gross abuse of human rights in her own back yard is concerned.

At the county level you cannot rock the boat because, as the Chamber of Commerce will eagerly explain, those thousands of nice American servicemen at USAF Lakenheath and USAF Mildenhall spend millions of pounds each year with local businesses in Suffolk, Norfolk and Cambridgeshire. You remember the people at the Chamber of Commerce don't you? Masons, Rotarians, Buffs and the rest, guzzling free Budweiser Beer at the Lakenheath Officer's Club, while looking down their noses at the Base Commander.

If you live in Britain and really care about legal and human rights for everyone including Ian Huntley, Maxine Carr, your own children and yourself, there is probably only one thing you can do: Call or fax the Chief Constable of Cambridgeshire Constabulary, expressing your disgust at the actions of his officers where this matter is concerned, and seeking his personal assurance that the illegal and immoral psychological assault on Huntley and Carr will be discontinued immediately.

Though it may seem pointless phoning or writing to a Chief Constable who is visibly not really in charge of events, he is nonetheless the only visible "front end" who can be directly and officially approached on the matter. If you keep pressing the right buttons often enough, you can and will make a difference. More than a decade ago matters were seriously mismanaged in a case involving myself, and I took exactly this action. The last time I bothered to check,  I still held the record for receiving three written apologies in a single week regarding the same mismanaged case: The first was from the Home Office, the second from Special Branch, and the third from the Chief Constable of Suffolk Constabulary. If I can make a difference, so can you. Get on with it!

The illegal return of murder suspect Ian Huntley to secure psychiatric prison for another 28 days of drugs and "truth therapy," highlights the reintroduction of Witch Trials and Inquisitions in the "War on Terror."

There is a precedent for Huntley's psychiatric abuse. During 1996, Australian remand prisoner Martin Bryant was held in illegal strict solitary confinement for 150 days, and "helped" by psychiatrists and psychologists until he finally pleaded guilty to the Port Arthur massacre. At no time did Australian police ever try to corroborate Bryant's false "guilty" pleas.

Ian Huntley, who stands accused of the murder of British ten-year-old girls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, was rushed from Rampton high-security psychiatric prison to a court at Peterborough in Cambridgeshire at noon on 10 September 2002. Having run the gauntlet of the obligatory media hate mob pre-positioned outside in the street, Huntley was rapidly processed through the Magistrates Court to the [higher] Crown Court in less that one hour, an all time record for the British legal system which normally allows eight days for this process.

Once in the Crown Court, Huntley was charged with attempted "Conspiracy to pervert the course of justice," for allegedly lying to police during their investigations. Having been charged with this further startling offence, Ian Huntley was immediately remanded back to Rampton high security psychiatric prison for a further 28 days of psychiatric evaluation.

Not one single British newspaper or television network tried to explain this extraordinary move to the public, though some of the brighter reporters did note a change in Huntley himself, who has been completely at the mercy of the shrinks in Rampton Gulag since 20 August:  "Huntley looked gaunt and has lost weight since his arrest just over three weeks ago. His face is spotty and he has grey steaks in his hair. He is a shadow of the stocky man who appeared on TV a month ago to say he was one of the last people to see the girls alive." The ways in which Huntley has been psychologically tortured to bring about these dramatic changes in his appearance, will be explained in detail later in this report.

By using the Crown Court in this deplorable way to bring a further charge against Huntley, police have actually revealed plenty about their lack of progress in the case. If the shrinks had been able to force a false confession out of Ian Huntley, the police would have visited Rampton in a flash, obtained his signature and sent him to Wormwood Scrubs Prison for life. You see, under British law if a suspect pleads "guilty" there is no need for a trial. Such a result would be very useful in a politically supercharged case like this, where the naked bodies of the two little girls were actually found close to the boundary fence of the controversial USAF base at Lakenheath.

Technically speaking, the police and courts have also erred seriously in law. When Ian Huntley was first committed to Rampton on 20 September 2002 under the Mental Health Act 1983, it was for the express and sole purpose of evaluating whether or not he was psychologically fit to plead. The police "investigation" was thus completely suspended at that precise point in time. If police considered that Huntley had lied to them during their earlier investigation, they should have charged him with conspiracy when they charged him with murder. Period.

So unwittingly perhaps, senior officers of the Cambridgeshire Constabulary have demonstrated their total lack of  evidence in the case, and also their earnest desire that the shrinks should wring a confession out of Huntley one way or the other. Remember, "guilty" pleas mean no embarrassing trial for the investigators. At the same time, girlfriend Maxine Carr has been remanded back to her personal hell in Holloway Prison, in order that she may be frightened and/or physically coerced into telling police the "new" truth about Ian Huntley. Remember, even the Spanish Inquisition liked to have a tame witness ready to denounce the prime suspect.

There is no doubt that Maxine's treatment has already been used as a weapon against him in Rampton, and Ian Huntley is obviously very concerned about his girlfriend's plight, a reality inadvertently noted by a reporter in the court: "He showed no emotion as Karim Khalil outlined the prosecution case, describing how the disappearance of the two 10-year-olds from Soham, Cambridgeshire, on 4 August had started a 'growing and substantial hunt ... to discover their whereabouts'. Only once did Huntley seem to break his apparently trance-like state. He stared in the direction of the judge after Maxine Carr's name was mentioned." And this from another reporter: "He [Huntley] became agitated when the name of Carr, charged with attempting to pervert justice, was read out. His eyes darted to a barrister, and he began to rub his nose and flick his head back."

Less than a month ago we all saw Ian Huntley on television, confident and relaxed, talking to reporters about the two girls and the fact that [from the apparent timing of their disappearance], he may have been the last person in Soham to talk to them before they vanished. Exactly how such a confident man could be reduced to the dazed state exhibited in the court after a "mere" three weeks in a psychiatric institution, may at first seem difficult to understand, but please be patient, all will be explained shortly.

As a man charged with an offence but not yet convicted, Ian Huntley would have been held as a "remand" prisoner in a standard prison while awaiting trial. He would have been allowed to wear his own clothes, make telephone calls to the outside world and receive plenty of visitors. Clearly this relatively relaxed atmosphere could not be manipulated to bring extreme pressure to bear on Huntley, so the Cambridgeshire Constabulary and the Home Office in London conspired to have him committed under the Mental Health Act 1983. Once committed, the safeguards protecting a remand prisoner were completely removed, allowing the shrinks to have a field day.

Immediately after arrival at Rampton high security psychiatric prison, Ian Huntley was forcibly stripped of his watch, other personal possessions, and all of his clothing including his underwear. Thereafter he was allowed to wear only a knee length blue smock, and was then placed in an isolation cell on "suicide watch" with the lights burning brightly 24-hours every day. A team of five psychiatric personnel were assigned the duty of "observing" and "evaluating" Huntley, a man whose entire world had just been turned upside down by them personally.

Ian Huntley no longer had his watch, so he was unable to keep track of time. He had no outside window in the cell, so in turn could not judge whether it was night or day. He was forced to wear a knee-length woman's dress with no underwear beneath, designed to heighten his sense of vulnerability and thus compliance with commands issued by the Rampton shrinks.

Would these deceptively simple procedures be enough to generate lasting psychological damage within a three week period? Oh yes, they certainly would, because the procedure used on Ian Huntley precisely mimics one of the most notorious psychological experiments of all time. Now known generically as "The Zimbardo Prison Study," the experiment was conducted in the basement of Stanford University during late 1971, in the wake of the San Quentin and Attica prison riots.

Rare original photographs from the Zimbardo Prison Study, August 1971. Note the male "prisoner" in the knee-length smock, exactly the same as Ian Huntley in Rampton.

In less than a week the experiment went catastrophically wrong, and from that day forward the procedures used became a complete "no go zone" for psychiatrists and psychologists alike. Rest assured that every lousy shrink, psychologist and mental nurse in Rampton knows about the Zimbardo Experiment, its consequences, and the fact that the procedures are banned from use in psychiatry and clinical psychology. They ignored and continue to ignore the bans where Ian Huntley is concerned. Just how devastating the Zimbardo Experiment was, and must be for Huntley now, is shown here briefly through the eyes of a participating psychologist:

"On Sunday morning, Aug., 17, 1971, nine young men were 'arrested' in their homes by Palo Alto police. At least one of those arrested vividly remembers the shock of having his neighbours come out to watch the commotion as TV cameras recorded his hand-cuffing for the nightly news. The arrestees were among about 70 young men, mostly college students eager to earn $15 a day for two weeks, who volunteered as subjects for an experiment on prison life that had been advertised in the Palo Alto Times.

"After interviews and a battery of psychological tests, the two dozen judged to be the most normal, average and healthy were selected to participate, assigned randomly either to be guards or prisoners. Those who would be prisoners were booked at a real jail, then blindfolded and driven to campus where they were led into a makeshift prison in the basement of Jordan Hall. Those assigned to be guards were given uniforms and instructed that they were not to use violence but that their job was to maintain control of the prison.

"From the perspective of the researchers, the experiment became exciting on day two when the prisoners staged a revolt. Once the guards had crushed the rebellion, 'they steadily increased their coercive aggression tactics, humiliation and dehumanization of the prisoners,' Zimbardo recalls. 'The staff had to frequently remind the guards to refrain from such tactics,' he said, and the worst instances of abuse occurred in the middle of the night when the guards thought the staff was not watching. The guards' treatment of the prisoners 'resulted in extreme stress reactions that forced us to release five prisoners, one a day, prematurely.' "

On day six the entire experiment, planned to run for two weeks, had to be terminated completely because of spiraling violence among the guards and acute stress among the prisoners. One of the psychologists who was involved in the experiment as an observer, later wrote: "I was sick to my stomach. When it's happening to you, it doesn't feel heroic; it feels real scary. It feels like you are a deviant."

Details of the experiment are well known. They are included in most basic psychology texts and in a public television psychology course, "Discovering Psychology," that Zimbardo wrote and narrates. Movie rights have been optioned, "60 Minutes" has filmed a segment on the experiment, and even a punk rock band in Los Angeles calls itself Stanford Prison Experiment.

As you might expect, Ian Huntley is not the only man to have these obscene techniques used against him in the 21st Century. Hidden from sight down in Cuba, hundreds of illegal prisoners are being subjected to almost identical treatment by US Government shrinks, psychologists and Military Police, the last of whom should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves. Also within federal American jurisdiction are more than 1,000 "disappeared" prisoners locked up after 9/11, whose names the White House refuses to release. Why the refusal?

Torture Victims in Camp X Ray, Cuba.

In Australia during 1996 we had the famous case of Martin Bryant, the intellectually impaired young man accused of slaughtering 35 victims at Port Arthur. Police had not a single scrap of forensic or any other evidence linking Bryant to Port Arthur, so psychiatrists and forensic psychologists were tasked with forcing "guilty" pleas out of Bryant, one way or the other. Remember, as with Ian Huntley in England, guilty pleas mean no embarrassing trial for investigators who have no evidence.

Though spared the humiliating woman's dress, remand prisoner Bryant got everything else they could throw at him. For nearly 150 days straight he was illegally confined to a small windowless cell, and deprived of all forms of contact and stimulation including television, radio and newspapers. After nearly six months of denying any involvement in the crimes, Bryant finally cracked during November 1996 and said "guilty" in return for a television set in his cell, and the promise of an early release. His lawyer and mother were not allowed to be present at his interrogation, despite his intellectually impaired status. For more on the Bryant story click here.

Disturbing for many is the rapidly expanding power of psychiatrists and psychologists in areas where they have no expert or even useful input, for example the police forces of certain western nations. In many jurisdictions these psycho-babblers have the authority to order serving officers to submit to "counseling" when the officers do not want or need it, and in other jurisdictions they have what can only be described as "awesome" powers.

For example, in one Australian police jurisdiction the Chief Psychologist has an absolute power of veto over any applicant who wishes to join the police service, and routinely fails nearly one third of all potential recruits, despite the fact they have already been security checked, and have passed their academic and physical examinations. Those he fails are frequently well qualified academically, high spirited, and have significant leadership qualities which later in their careers would be a marked advantage at senior rank level. To an outsider, the psychological ambition appears to be limiting operational police posts to those who can be relied on to carry out any and all orders, legal or illegal, without question.

Almost without us realizing it, over the past decade the western world has been steadily [and stealthily] moving towards a post-Orwellian environment, where white is black, or indeed any other colour selected at will by the mandarins or senators in power. It is becoming increasingly obvious to everyday folk that Ian Huntley, Maxine Carr, Martin Bryant, and thousands of other people mostly incarcerated in American and Israeli prisons, are there for purely political reasons.

Ironically perhaps, this is much the same scenario that existed during the fall of the first Roman Empire. Some people had to be blamed for the catastrophes befalling the Empire, while others had to be blamed for bizarre political murders conducted on the orders of the Emperor and the Senate. The first few hundred "inquisitions" did not take place in Spain as most people fondly imagine, but in Rome. I need hardly mention that the destruction of the twin towers in New York on 11 September 2001, marked the beginning of the fall of the second Roman Empire.

The plight of political prisoners should not be forgotten by any of us, and all readers should do what they can to secure the prompt release of Ian Huntley, Maxine Carr, Martin Bryant and all of the other prisoners in Cuba, America and Israel, whose names we do not yet know. It seems unlikely that shrinks will suddenly stop the abuse of their prisoners, and even more unlikely that politicians will ask them to stop.

Psychiatric control is all too convenient for those committed to the abuse of power, which is probably why Doctor Jose Delgado, Director of Neuropsychiatry at Yale University Medical School, was not thrown out of the US Congress back on 24 February 1974, for his unconventional [some might say insane] statements. It seems right to leave you here with what the "eminent" Doctor Delgado advised American politicians:

"We need a program of psychosurgery for political control of our society. The purpose is physical control of the mind. Everyone who deviates from the given norm can be surgically mutilated.

"The individual may think that the most important reality is his own existence, but this is only his personal point of view. This lacks historical perspective.

"Man does not have the right to develop his own mind. This kind of liberal orientation has great appeal. We must electrically control the brain. Some day armies and generals will be controlled by electric stimulation of the brain." ... Congressional Record, No. 26, Vol. 118.

Update Friday 13 September 2002

According to the BBC, Detective Constable Brian Stevens and one other unnamed officer from the team investigating the murders of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, were arrested at 7am yesterday on suspicion of child pornography offences, apparently detected by the child pornography monitoring American "Operation Candyman" run by the FBI with CIA assistance. Tips from Candyman are routed through the British police anti-pornography unit at the Home Office, code-named Operation Ore.

DC Stevens was one of four family liaison officers made available to the families 24-hours-a-day, from the time Holly and Jessica went missing on 4 August, and he also read out a poem at the memorial service for Jessica and her best friend Holly Wells. The other officer arrested, of unknown rank, also worked on the inquiry into the girls' deaths.

While only a fool would completely rule out possible guilt where either of these two officers are concerned, it must be said that the timing of the arrests was extremely useful for people in high places. With no case against Ian Huntley or Maxine Carr, and none likely in the foreseeable future, media attention might eventually wander towards the huge USAF base at Lakenheath, where the bodies of the two girls were found.

With Prime Minister Tony Blair psyching-up an unpopular attack on Iraq in which USAF Lakenheath and nearby USAF Mildenhall would play pivotal roles, the power brokers in London and Washington simply could not afford a scandal involving either base. Putting two local police officers in the frame, whether they are guilty or innocent, will certainly deflect attention away from Lakenheath and Mildenhall - at least for a while.

Though this analysis is obviously speculative, it is certainly no more speculative than suddenly arresting two officers on suspicion of child pornography offences, when the real shock-wave of "Operation Candyman" arrests in Britain and Australia took place more than four months ago, during May 2002.

Furthermore, if these two officers had been genuine suspects at that time, Operation Ore would have taken discreet steps to have them sidelined into non-operational work, certainly well away from any controversial investigation into the two missing ten-year-old girls, Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman.

Curiously perhaps, the two officers were apparently arrested "on suspicion of inciting others to distribute indecent photographs of children - an offence contrary to common law." This does not necessarily mean that any such "incitement" would require the use of computer equipment located in their homes or offices. The officers could, for example, have been "framed" by an informant calling Operation Candyman in America on the telephone, or by anyone sending an email or facsimile.

Cambridgeshire's Acting Deputy Chief Constable Keith Hoddy - the man in charge of the Holly and Jessica operation - decided to call in an outside force to investigate, which is normal enough in these cases. West Midlands Police will conduct the investigation under the supervision of the Police Complaints Authority at the Home Office.

Check the timeline with me here. Large number of Candyman arrests were made in May 2002, but not these two officers. In August 2002 the same two officers were heavily engaged in the hunt for Holly and Jessica, without being discreetly excluded by Operation Ore. By late August and in early September both officers were heavily involved with the parents of the dead children, but were still not discreetly removed by Operation Ore.

On Tuesday 10 September Ian Huntley appeared in Peterborough court, and despite the psychiatric abuse he has suffered at Rampton, refused to plead "guilty" to the two murders. He was immediately remanded back to Rampton for another 28 days in La La Land, but essentially the game was up. Sooner rather than later the bored media would start looking around for other more likely suspects.

Wednesday 11 September was the anniversary of the attack on New York, with most people in America quietly sobbing into their handkerchiefs, so what were the FBI or CIA doing putting through a call to Operation Ore about these two "suddenly" suspicious officers, right in the middle of tear jerking ceremonies being held across the length and breadth of the USA?. Gee, it must have been important! Or perhaps it was just simple agency concern about the ongoing availability of the twin bases at Lakenheath and Mildenhall for George W. Bush.

Then very neatly at 7am on Thursday 12 September, a mere two days after Ian Huntley stubbornly refused to take the drop for crimes he did not commit, Detective Constable Stevens and his colleague were arrested. The Police Complaints Authority became involved immediately, which from memory it normally only does if a complaint is laid before it by an individual, or by the Inspectorate of Constabulary at the Home Office.

With an independent constabulary involved, and especially the very heavy Police Complaints Authority, there is absolutely no chance of either officer being cleared overnight, so to speak. If only because of the onerous paperwork involved, the investigation of the Soham officers will take weeks rather than days. This page will be updated as and when there is something to report, but for the moment at least, and unless hard evidence is presented, my money is on the two officers being used as deliberate decoys.