SAOIRSE32

Press statement
Contact the Pat Finucane Centre for further info-07989 323418

Family Welcome Findings of HET Focussed Investigation

The family of Aidan Mc Anespie who was shot and fatally wounded by a British soldier in 1988 have issued the following statement through the Pat Finucane Centre.

Speaking at the weekend Una Mc Anespie, niece of the victim said,”Within the last week we have had a further meeting with the Historical Enquiries Team as a follow-up to the interim report which we received earlier this year. That interim report described the officially accepted version of the incident, that the weapon discharge that led to the death of Aidan had been accidental and random, as the “. least likely” explanation.

As agreed we have now been provided with a full resolution report which is the result of the focussed investigation. This report, in our view, is a devastating rebuttal of the British Army version of events and represents the closest that we as a family have got to the truth of what occurred that day.”

The HET considered three scenarios:

1) Guardsman Holden accidentally discharged the gun in the manner described by him in his statements or in some other unknown and undisclosed circumstances.

2) Guardsman Holden deliberately discharged a burst of aimed shots at the victim or his vicinity.

3) Guardsman Holden was tracking the victim with the gun, or was aiming the gun at him, and being unaware that the gun was cocked and ready to fire, inadvertently discharging the three shots.

In respect of the ‘accidental discharge’ theory, the first scenario, the report concluded,
‘When the facts that the victim of this alleged random shot was a subject that the soldiers kept under observation, and was perceived by them as a potential terrorist suspect, are added to the equation, then the likelihood that it was a random shot is even less. Add to this the minimum 9lb pressure required to pull the trigger and the probability of ‘accidental firing’ recedes further.’

(see unedited HET Conclusions below)

The HET report continued, “Having weighed up these propositions and taken all the circumstances into account, none of the three scenarios outlined above can be definitively ruled out; Guardsman Holden’s version of events, however, can be considered to be the least likely.”
In respect of the fatal shot the HET concluded, ‘…the chances of it being un-aimed or random seem so remote in the circumstances that they can be virtually disregarded.’

In response Una Mc Anespie said, “As a family we feel that a huge burden has been lifted as a result of these latest findings. The claim that Aidan was killed by a ricochet bullet fired at random because a soldier had wet slippy fingers which inadvertently came in contact with the trigger and that Aidan was not being tracked at that precise moment has been firmly rebutted. The official scenario, as accepted by the British Army and the prosecution service, can be regarded as so ‘remote’ that it can be ‘virtually disregarded’.

This investigation examined the circumstances in the context of the harassment that Aidan suffered and Guardsman Holden’s perception of Aidan as the ‘enemy’. The official explanation of the events of Sunday February 21 1988 have been deconstructed in their entirety. My mother, Elish, fought for 20 years to have the truth told. It was a great comfort to her to receive the interim report before she died earlier this summer. These latest findings are a lasting tribute to her efforts and a vindication of our beloved son, brother and uncle Aidan.

Background

On Sunday 21 February 1988, Aidan McAnespie was shot and fatally wounded by a soldier firing a General Purpose Machine Gun (GPMG) from the permanent British army checkpoint at Aughnacloy Co. Tyrone. A Grenadier Guardsman, David Holden, was charged with manslaughter but the Director of Public Prosecutions later withdrew this charge.

Holden claimed that he was moving the GPMG when his wet fingers, which were allegedly wet from cleaning the sanger, slipped onto the trigger, which resulted in the discharge of three shots. One of the shots struck Aidan in the back, fatally wounding him. According to the ballistic and forensic evidence, the fatal shot was a ricochet. Guardsman Holden denied that he aimed at Aidan or was tracking him and claimed that the incident was a tragic accident.

Aidan McAnespie was routinely stopped and harassed by the British army as he passed through the Aughnacloy check point on his way to work or going to the GAA club located past the checkpoint. As with many nationalists at the time Aidan was considered by the British army to be an IRA suspect, therefore, his movements were observed and recorded by the soldiers at the check point. He had made numerous complaints to the RUC about the harassment and had raised this in the media. In the minutes before the shooting there is incontrovertible evidence that he was being tracked as he walked through the checkpoint.

Gdsm Holden claimed that he moved the weapon by holding the pistol grip with a “loose grip.” As he did, his finger slipped and he inadvertently pulled the trigger. The HET test fired a GPMG and found that:

“Activating the trigger required having a firm grip on the pistol grip and squeezing the trigger until it activated. It was found to be difficult and required considerable force to activate the trigger without having the hand firmly gripped around the pistol grip.” Therefore, Holden’s loose grip explanation contradicted the results of the practical test on the weapon.

Furthermore, the HET discovered that the gun was mounted on to a pivot, which allowed the weapon to be swivelled. Therefore there was no necessity for Holden to have his hand on the pistol grip and finger on the trigger guard since he only had to swivel the butt of the weapon on the pivot in order to reposition the weapon. In addition another soldier confirmed that he had already repositioned the weapon.

Holden claimed that his hands were still wet from cleaning the Sanger 10 minutes earlier. HET investigators have analysed the activities in the sangar that day which showed that the cleaning was conducted by a cleaning party and that Holden had resumed look- out duty a half hour before the shooting. The ‘wet hands’ scenario is difficult to reconcile with the timing of the cleaning duties.

Lance Sergeant Peters gave evidence that on entering the sangar after the shooting and asking Holden what had happened the reply was that he had squeezed the trigger.

Investigation:

Holden was not interviewed by the RUC until more than 24 hours after the incident. In the intervening period he remained in military custody. There was a further 24 hour delay before the second interview took place.

The crime scene was not forensically examined until the next day and the scene was not secured in the interim. This would result in “crime scene evidence recovered being questionable” according to the HET.

Forensic & Ballistics

The gun had been dismantled and cleaned earlier that day. It has not been established why or by whom the gun was left cocked and with the safety catch off. This was totally in contravention of standing orders.

The forensic evidence concluded that a ricochet bullet, which struck the ground just directly behind Aidan before it entered his body, inflicted the fatal injury.

The weapon discharged three rounds and the fatal bullet was a tracer round. There is now no way of knowing whether the fatal bullet was the first or the last of three shots fired. Swab tests taken from the roadway no longer exist.

If the first shot fired resulted in the ricochet from the fatal strike mark then this could support the assertion that the gun was aimed at the victim or in his vicinity. However, the HET has since discovered that the forensic report gave no consideration to the possibility that the fatal ricochet was a result of the first shot discharged from the weapon. The forensic scientist did not test the stike marks on the road to ascertain which were the result of racer bullets-a test which would have been evidentially important.

It should be noted that there is clear evidence that the Guardsman had Aidan, whom he considered to be a suspect, under close observation as he passed through the checkpoint. However at the moment of discharge Holden claimed to have been physically repositioning the weapon. In otherwords he claims not to have been aiming at or tracking Aidan when the shots were fired.

The HET report noted

“An impartial and independent observer must question the likelihood of an accidental random discharge striking the roadway only a few feet behind what would be from the vantage point of the machine gun post a miniscule figure at a distance of 283.4 meters. The statistical odds, as outlined by Independent Ballistic expert Keith Borer, are strongly against the accidental discharge theory.”

END

Contact Derry office info@patfinucanecentre.org or Newry office newry@patfinucanecentre.org Please delete all other PFC emails. Website www.patfinucanecentre.org

____________

HET Conclusions

This review into the death of Aidan Martin McAnespie has been examined against the below factors:

a.. The original case investigation
b.. Exhibits records
c.. Ballistic evidence
d.. Family concerns
e.. Intelligence records
f.. Analysis of available evidence

The HET concludes that, on the basis of the available evidence: -

Aidan McAnespie died as a result of being struck by a high velocity bullet, which ricocheted from the roadway a short distance behind him and was fired by Guardsman David Holden from a General Purpose Machine Gun located in an upper sangar nearly 300 metres away.

Guardsman Holden has already been interviewed, arrested and charged with manslaughter, although the charge was withdrawn by the DPP at the time, and this review has found no legal grounds or new evidence to justify re-interviewing him or for submitting a file of evidence for reconsideration by the PPS.

The HET has considered the accounts given by the witnesses, in particular the soldiers involved. There are three possible scenarios;

1. Guardsman Holden accidentally discharged the gun in the manner described by him in his statements or in some other unknown and undisclosed circumstances.

2. Guardsman Holden deliberately discharged a burst of aimed shots at the victim or in his vicinity.

3. Guardsman Holden was tracking the victim with the gun, or was aiming the gun at him, and being unaware that the gun was cocked and ready to fire, pulled the trigger, inadvertently discharging the three shots.

There is little doubt that, as a young British soldier in control of a lethal weapon, with a person he considered an IRA suspect in his sights, Guardsman Holden would have felt some antipathy towards the victim; the evidence does not definitively rule out an accidental discharge, but nor does it preclude the possibility that Guardsman Holden deliberately fired the gun at the victim.

It was also suggested in the interview with Guardsman Holden, and is a possibility, that he had been tracking the victim with the gun, or had the gun aimed at him, and had pulled the trigger, unaware that it had been left cocked, resulting in the discharge. The issue of the remains of a dust cap, still in place when the weapon was fired, may support this contention. He denied this account, however.

The accidental discharge version is based on the statement of Guardsman Holden, supported to some degree by the findings of Forensic Scientist and Ballistic expert, Gary Montgomery. The evidence of a ricochet was also used to support this version.

This formed the rationale for the subsequent decisions made by the SIO and his senior officers to recommend no prosecution and possibly then the decision by the DPP not to prosecute.

The opinion of Mr Montgomery, an experienced Forensic Scientist and ballistic expert, undoubtedly warrants serious consideration; however, the HET must assess it on the basis of it being an opinion and, like any opinion, open to debate and challenge.

From a critical (and the family, perspective) it could be argued that his findings were too readily accepted by the police and not subject to any other expert scrutiny until Keith Borer’s submissions in 1990.

He bases his opinion on his expectation that the three bullets fired would have struck in the same area if the weapon had been deliberately discharged from a firm firing position. Yet whilst one of the bullets struck below and to the left of the victim, the other two bullets struck, more or less, in the same area.

Given it is unknown, and likely to remain unknown, exactly under what conditions or circumstances Guardsman Holden fired the weapon, except for his version of events, then Mr Montgomery’s conclusions are arguable and, to some degree, based on assumptions made from the circumstances explained to him; for example, he does not appear to have been invited to consider whether a ’surprise firing’ resulting from the soldier ‘tracking’ Aidan with the weapon, unaware that it was cocked, might account for the spread of strike marks.

If the nearest/lowest strike mark (KD 1) resulted from the first shot fired from the gun, it would to some degree support the contention that the gun was not aimed at the victim.

However, if the first shot fired, resulted in the ricochet from the fatal strike mark (KD 2) then this could support the assertion that the gun was aimed at the victim or in his vicinity.

In Mr Montgomery’s report, the possibility that the fatal ricochet was as a result of the first shot discharged from the weapon is not examined.

The evidence of the fatal shot being a ricochet is also used to support the accidental discharge version, which is perceived by the family as ruling out the other options; yet an aimed shot, directed close by the target, could also have resulted in an unplanned ricochet with catastrophic consequences. This does not seem to have been considered.

The fact that the bullet struck the roadway only a metre or so behind the victim at a distance of 283.4 metres from the firing point, does not add any great weight to the view that the shooting was accidental and conversely could indicate that the gun was deliberately aimed towards him.

An impartial and objective observer must question the likelihood of an accidental, random discharge striking the roadway only a few feet behind, what would be from the vantage point of the machine gun post, a miniscule figure at a distance of 283.4 metres. The statistical odds, as outlined by Independent Ballistic expert Keith Borer, are strongly against the accidental discharge account.

When the facts that the victim of this alleged random shot was a subject that the soldiers had kept under observation, and was perceived by them as a potential terrorist suspect, are added to the equation, then the likelihood that it was a random shot is even less. Add to this the minimum 9lb pressure required to pull the trigger and the probability of ‘accidental firing’ recedes further.

Having weighed up these propositions and taken all the circumstances into account, none of the three scenarios outlined can be definitively ruled out; Guardsman Holden’s version of events, however, can be considered to be the least likely.

The HET cannot judge, on the available evidence, whether the shot was fired deliberately or unintentionally. The fact that the dust cover was in place, and the possibility that the weapon may well have been left cocked without the knowledge of Guardsman Holden, may support the view that the actual discharge was unintentional. However, the chances of it being un-aimed or random seem to be so remote in the circumstances that they can be virtually disregarded.

This leaves the option of a deliberate shot, or the option that Guardsman Holden was ‘tracking’ Aidan with his weapon aimed, and was unaware that the weapon was cocked when the trigger was pulled.

The family believe that it was a deliberate shot, either to kill Aidan or aimed nearby to scare him.

In the final analysis, the HET is of the view that, whatever the truth of the matter in this case, it is unlikely that the GPMG was discharged in the circumstances, or in the manner, described by Guardsman Holden.

Breaking News.ie
13/10/2008

The New York grave of an Irish woman who was the first emigrant to pass through Ellis Island has been marked with a Celtic cross.

Clergy members joined Annie Moore’s descendants and admirers on Saturday in a Queens Cemetery.

She died 80 years ago, but her unmarked grave was discovered only two years ago.

She was 17 when she arrived in New York from Co Cork in 1892. The Irish consul general in New York says she is a symbol for the hundreds of thousands of Irish who settled in New York.

Ellis Island was the gateway to America for more than 12 million immigrants.

As many as 5,000 people a day passed through the processing centre at its peak in the early 1900s.

Irish Times
13 Oct 2008

Teachers at a secondary school in Northern Ireland were on strike today as a dispute over a pupil who assaulted a teacher deepened.

Some 25 teachers at Moville High School in Newtownards, Co Down — all members of the NASUWT union — were backing the indefinite action, claiming they had been unfairly penalised for refusing to teach the pupil.

Those striking amount to around half of the teaching staff at the school but the South Eastern Education and Library Board said the school would remain open and pupils should attend as normal.

The NASUWT claimed the teachers had been docked pay for refusing to teach the pupil.

Following the assault they had voted not to teach the pupil but made clear to the headmaster that they intended to teach all other pupils.

However the union claimed they were told they would be paid to teach all pupils in the class or none.

Seamus Searson, Northern Ireland organiser of the teachers’ union , said: “Clearly we cannot tolerate a situation where our members are not paid for the work they are doing and where, in effect, all the pupils are being punished for the behaviour of one.

“All along we have made it clear that our members want to continue teaching their classes, but this particular pupil needs a new start with specialised support.”

Mr Searson hit out at the education board for its handling of the situation.

“The failure of the South Eastern Education and Library Board to provide proper support for this pupil is having a devastating impact on teachers and students alike,” he said.

Belfast Telegraph
Monday, 13 October 2008

A security alert which saw dozens of people spend the night out of their homes in the village of Sion Mills ended at 6.20am today.

Police officers have now removed a vehicle for investigation.

Residents living in Seein Road were moved from their homes yesterday evening.

Speaking to the Telegraph this morning, a MLA from the village, who opened a church hall for those forced out of their homes, said that he thought this sort of behaviour was in the past.

DUP councillor Allan Bresland said: “There was a real sense of sadness amongst those who were moved. Sion Mills has suffered like so many other places during the course of the Troubles and it brought back some bad memories.

INLA asked for approval before it killed loyalist leader, public inquiry told

Henry McDonald, Ireland editor
Guardian
Sunday October 12 2008

Loyalist Billy Wright’s 1997 assassination had to be approved by a notorious IRA commander, according to newly released British army intelligence documents.

The INLA, which killed Wright inside the Maze prison, sought the consent of the IRA in Belfast before the murder, military intelligence officers have claimed. The group held meetings with the IRA commander, from Ardoyne, north Belfast, who also ordered the 1993 Shankill bomb attack, they said.

Undercover army surveillance units had key members of the INLA leadership who were central to the murder plot under round-the-clock observation in the days leading up to Wright’s assassination, the documents confirm.

The classified material was released last week to the ongoing public inquiry into the killing of the Loyalist Volunteer Force leader in the maximum-security prison.

Wright’s family have alleged that the prison authorities and the security forces ‘turned a blind eye’ to the dangers the LVF founder faced while sharing a block with INLA inmates. They also claim the security forces could have prevented the murder because they had intelligence warnings that he was being targeted.

A military intelligence officer known as Captain AA told the inquiry that the meetings, under constant surveillance, could have related to Wright’s murder. He said that he was a battalion intelligence officer with responsibility for north and west Belfast from September 1997 to May 1998.

Under questioning last week by the Rev John Oliver, the former Anglican Bishop of Hereford who is one of three inquiry panel members, Captain AA said that the INLA had to seek the approval of the IRA to kill Wright. Captain AA said: ‘It would have been foolhardy of them [INLA] to carry out an operation without at least the tacit consent of PIRA.’

A further British military assessment disclosed to the tribunal states: ‘It is assessed the INLA meetings held at Belfast address 1 on the 16th and 19th of December were in connection with the murder of Billy Wright.’

Wright’s murder almost destroyed the fragile political negotiations leading to the Good Friday Agreement a few months later. Wright’s killing caused a wave of loyalist retaliatory gun attacks in Belfast and mid-Ulster.

Patrick Murphy
Irish News
**Via Newshound
11/10/08

Dear Continuity IRA,

The chief constable, Hugh Orde, says that you are trying to kill one of his police officers. While Sir Hugh’s staff may not be so hot at gathering evidence for high-profile court cases, few would disagree with his assessment of your attempts to kill a PSNI member.

The question which many would ask is why? That’s right – why kill a police officer? Presumably your answer would be along the lines of uniting Ireland by driving out the British. This indicates your belief in the cause-and-effect relationship between dead police officers and Irish unity. So where is your evidence?

One fact in your favour is the killing of two policemen in Tipperary by Dan Breen and others in January 1919. That event triggered the Irish War of Independence, which led eventually to what is known as the Republic of Ireland today.

But all the remaining evidence is stacked against you. No matter how much violence you use, it is unlikely that you will ever match the level achieved by the Provisional IRA. Historians indicate that they killed 285 police officers here and in Britain.

Without any disrespect to the dead, and with due sensitivity to the feelings of their families, one political outcome of PIRA violence was that Sinn Fein won 28 seats in the assembly. There is no suggestion that any Sinn Fein member supports violence but it works out at 10 police deaths per assembly seat.

In addition, the PIRA killed 698 soldiers, 23 prison officers, 59 alleged informers, 33 civilians working for the army, 33 loyalists, 322 civilians and 67 others, including five members of the Garda.

And you are crawling around in the dark in the Fermanagh undergrowth trying to kill a single police officer. Have you analysed the consequences of the PIRA campaign?

It went far beyond Fermanagh. The Provos almost assassinated the British prime minister. Of course they failed to recognise that no sooner have you assassinated one British prime minister, than another one pops up smiling on the steps at Downing Street. In any case, assassinating Gordon Brown may not be necessary. If you wait, Labour back-benchers in marginal constituencies might do it for you.

Alternatively you could blow up the City of London’s financial district. But that has already been done twice – once by the Provos and just last week by its own financial experts. The bankers caused infinitely more damage than the bombers.

So that leaves you back in Fermanagh.

It may well be exciting to engage in what the Donegal republican, Peadar O’Donnell, called forming fours in dark corners in fields. But it is hard to avoid the conclusion that it is really nothing more than a diversion. It is a bit like preparing for an imminent examination. Instead of studying, we tend to find absolutely anything different to do by way of avoiding the real issue.

Suddenly, painting the kitchen ceiling has a diversionary appeal which only exams can generate. With all due respect to the legitimacy of your political aspirations, you are painting Ireland’s ceiling when you should be studying. You could start with history and economics.

These will teach you that the only people who can break the connection with England are your 1,000,000 Protestant neighbours. With them on your side, you will not need to kill anyone. Without them, your war, like that of the PIRA, will be lost before it starts.

Your biggest problem is that the British government has a weapon of political mass destruction. It is called sectarianism and there is no weapon available on the international arms market which can combat it.

So your challenge is to avoid being dragged into a sectarian war like the PIRA, who then negotiated a sectarian peace. They set out to destroy the state of Northern Ireland and then said they wanted to reform it. Many believe that they merely re-formed it. A one-party sectarian state became a four-party sectarian state. Three-and-a-half thousand people died in the re-formation. Another death will not change anything.

It is difficult to overstate the huge human and moral implications of trying to kill someone. To justify such an action you would need an overwhelming mass of supporting evidence. Right now you have none, which is one of the reasons the PSNI can retain their moral authority despite their poor record at evidence-gathering.

You will not find supporting evidence for violence in history and economics books, but you will find a non-sectarian way forward towards Irish independence.

Take it.

Republicans in ’state of panic’ as Wall Street woes hit investments

By JIM CUSACK
Independent.ie
Sunday October 12 2008

The IRA may have lost a substantial amount of its fortune in the banking collapse in the United States, according to republican sources.

Sources say that in recent years the IRA’s financial bosses moved large amounts of money through front companies into a number of Wall Street financial institutions that were offering high dividends, but which have been devastated by the sub-prime market collapse. One source put the amount invested in the US institutions at €200m. They said most of this was made through the sale of commercial properties mainly here in the Republic.

Advisors brought in by the IRA in the aftermath of the 1997 ceasefire directed that IRA money be invested in the then booming property market. According to the sources, the same people advised to get out at the top of the property market and sink the money into high-dividend deposit accounts in Wall Street in the past few years.

The extent of the losses incurred in the crash over the past few weeks is not known. However, sources in the North said that one senior IRA finance figure made four apparently frantic visits to New York as the markets began showing signs of impending disaster and then collapsed. According to the sources, well-known republican figures in Belfast were in a “state of panic”.

Mr Adams and senior Sinn Fein figures enjoy an extraordinarily lavish lifestyle in the US, staying in suites in top hotels and dining in top restaurants. During his visit to New York for this year’s St Patrick’s Day celebrations, Mr Adams had lunch with top Wall Street financiers at Bobby Van’s restaurant on 54th Street, a favourite haunt of Frank Sinatra and his Rat Pack in the Fifties and Sixties.

According to republican sources, however, large amounts were deposited with the very same high-yield financial institutions in Wall Street which were making extraordinary profits on the back of the sub-prime market in the US. The sources say that recent indications are that the IRA has lost heavily.

Another irony for republicans is that Sinn Fein’s four TDs voted to support the Government’s bailout of the banking system here 11 days ago, despite the party’s stated claims of being “socialist”.

There are also indications that despite the amount of money at its disposal for elections north and south in recent years, the party’s coffers appear to be drying up. Up to last year Sinn Fein had more constituency offices and full-time staff than most of the political parties north and south put together. However, since mid-2007 it has been hit by a series of resignations, mainly of full-time workers and councillors. According to one source one of the current sources of disillusionment among the remaining 50 or so councillors in the Republic has been the withdrawal of “political operating expenses” to top up their council salaries and expenses which rarely exceed €30,000 a year.

- JIM CUSACK

A campaign has been launched to repatriate the body of Mary Queen of Scots from Westminster Abbey.

By Auslan Cramb
Telegraph.co.uk
12 Oct 2008

The Nationalist MSP Christine Grahame has lodged a motion in parliament calling for the monarch’s remains to be buried in Scotland.

The move to repatriate the Catholic monarch has the backing of the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland, historians and the composer James MacMillan.

Mary, who was born at Linlithgow Palace, fled to England after she was forced to abdicate in 1567. She was held prisoner by her cousin Elizabeth I, found guilty of treason and executed at Fotheringhay Castle in Northamptonshire 20 years later.

Although initially buried at Peterborough Cathedral, her body was exhumed in 1612 when her son, King James I of England and VI of Scotland, ordered that she be re-interred at Westminster Abbey.

(more…)

Eighteen years ago, Rashin Soodmand’s father was hanged in Iran for converting to Christianity. Now her brother is in a Mashad jail, and expects to be executed under new religious laws brought in this summer. Alasdair Palmer reports.

Telegraph.co.uk
11 October 2008

A month ago, the Iranian parliament voted in favour of a draft bill, entitled “Islamic Penal Code”, which would codify the death penalty for any male Iranian who leaves his Islamic faith. Women would get life imprisonment. The majority in favour of the new law was overwhelming: 196 votes for, with just seven against.

Life for Rashin Soodmand, her siblings and her mother became extremely difficult after her father was executed in Iran for the ‘crime’ of abandoning his religion (Photo: PAUL GROVER)

Imposing the death penalty for changing religion blatantly violates one of the most fundamental of all human rights. The right to freedom of religion is enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and in the European Convention of Human Rights. It is even enshrined as Article 23 of Iran’s own constitution, which states that no one may be molested simply for his beliefs.

And yet few politicians or clerics in Iran see any contradiction between a law mandating the death penalty for changing religion and Iran’s constitution. There has been no public protest in Iran against it.

David Miliband, Britain’s Foreign Secretary, stands out as one of the few politicians from any Western country who has put on record his opposition to making apostasy a crime punishable by death. The protest from the EU has been distinctly muted; meanwhile, Germany, Iran’s largest foreign trading partner, has just increased its business deals with Iran by more than half. Characteristically, the United Nations has said nothing.

It is a sign of how little interest there is in Iran’s intention to launch a campaign of religious persecution that its parliamentary vote has still not been reported in the mainstream media.

For one woman living in London, however, the Iranian parliamentary vote cannot be brushed aside. Rashin Soodmand is a 29-year-old Iranian Christian. Her father, Hossein Soodmand, was the last man to be executed in Iran for apostasy, the “crime” of abandoning one’s religion. He had converted from Islam to Christianity in 1960, when he was 13 years old. Thirty years later, he was hanged by the Iranian authorities for that decision.

Today, Rashin’s brother, Ramtin, is also held in a prison cell in Mashad, Iran’s holiest city. He was arrested on August 21. He has not been charged but he is a Christian. And Rashin fears that, just as her father was the last man to be executed for apostasy in Iran, her brother may become one of the first to be killed under Iran’s new law.

Not surprisingly, Rashin is desperately worried. “I am terribly anxious about him,” she explains. “Even though my brother is not an apostate, because he has never been a Muslim – my father raised us all as Christians – I don’t think he is safe. They assume that if you are Iranian, you must be Muslim.”

Her brother’s situation has ominous echoes of her father’s fate. Rashin was 14 when her father was arrested. “He was held in prison for one month,” she remembers. “Then the religious police released him without explanation and without apology. We were overjoyed. We thought his ordeal was over.”

But six months later, the police came back and took her father away again. This time, they offered him a choice: he could denounce his Christian faith, and the church in which he was a pastor – or he would be killed. “Of course, my father refused to give up his faith,” Rashid recalls proudly. “He could not renounce his God. His belief in Christ was his life – it was his deepest conviction.” So two weeks later, Hossein Soodmand was taken by guards to the prison gallows and hanged.

Life for Rashin, her siblings and her mother became extremely difficult. Some Muslims are extremely hostile to people of any other religion, never mind to those who they consider apostates: Ayatollah Khomeini declared that “non-Muslims are impure”, insisting that for Muslims to wash the clothes of non-Muslims, or to eat food with non-Muslims, or even to use utensils touched by non-Muslims, would spoil their purity.

The family was supported with financial and other help from a Christian church based in Iran. That support became even more critical as Rashin’s mother began to lose her sight. Rashin herself was eventually able to leave Iran. She now lives in London, married to a fellow Christian from Iran who successfully applied for asylum in Germany.

It took years for Rashin to understand how her father could have been legally executed simply for becoming a Christian. In 1990, there was no parliamentary law mandating the death for apostates. What, then, was the legal basis for Hossein Soodmand’s execution?

“After the revolution of 1979, Iran’s rulers wanted to turn Iran into an Islamic state, and to abolish the secular laws of the Shah,” explains Alexa Papadouris of Christian Solidarity Worldwide, a human rights organisation that specialises in freedom of religion. “So the clerics instituted a mandate for judges presiding over criminal cases: if the existing penal code did not include legislation on whether a certain kind of behaviour is an offence, then the judges should refer to traditional Islamic jurisprudence.” In other words: sharia law.

“That automatically created problems” says Mr Papadouris, “because Islamic jurisprudence is not codified law: it is a series of formulations developed across generations by scholars and clerics. Depending on the Islamic school or historical era, these formulations can differ and even contradict each other.”

On one subject, however, sharia law is unequivocal: men who change their religion from Islam must be punished with death. So when the judge heard the case of Rashid’s father, he could refer to sharia and reach a straightforward decision: the death penalty. There was no procedure for appeal.

Nevertheless, in the 18 years since Hossein Soodmand’s execution, there have been no judicially sanctioned killings of apostates in Iran, although there have been many reports of disappearances and even murders. “As the number of converts from Islam grows,” notes Ms Papadouris, “apostasy has again become a serious concern for the Iranian government.” In addition to 10,000 Christian converts living in Iran, there are several hundred thousand Baha’is who are deemed apostates.

There is another factor: President Ahmadinejad. “The President didn’t initiate the law mandating the death penalty for apostates,” says Papadouris, “but he has been lobbying for it. It is an effective form of playing populist politics. The Iranian economy is doing very badly, and the country is in a mess: Ahmadinejad may be calculating that he can gain support, and deflect attention from Iran’s problems, by persecuting apostates.”

The new law is not yet in force in Iran: it requires another vote in parliament, and then the signature of the Ayatollah. But that could happen within a matter of weeks. “Or,” says Papadouris, “it could conceivably be allowed to drop, were there a powerful enough international outcry”.

Time may be running out for Rashin’s brother. She believes that the new law will be applied in an arbitrary fashion, with individuals selected for death being chosen to frighten others into submission. That is why she fears for her brother. “We just don’t know what will happen to him. We only know that if they want to kill him, they will.”