16/08/2014 Witness

films, including the story of arrest and education in Saddam Hussein's

Iraq. And on account of when a Greenpeace ship was bombed.

Welcome to Witness, our look back at history as told by the people who

were there. I am here at the British library in the very centre of London

to bring you our monthly look back at history. This month will take you

back to a witness in Iraq under Saddam Hussein, India under British

rule and a bomb attack against Greenpeace. At first, we are going

back 35 years to Nicaragua. In 1979, the dictator, whose family had ruled

Nicaragua for more than 50 years, was pushed out of power by rebels.

The general's family ruled Nicaragua for almost 50 years. There were many

attempts to overthrow the dynasty but in 1979 it was my generation

that was able to get rid of the last member of the family. We called in

the last Marine because that it take to ship `` dictatorship was

supported by the US all of those years. I was shocked about the

poverty when I was little and I start to think this wasn't normal.

There was something abnormal with the way things were in Nicaragua.

When I was a student, I was involved in the students movement and I was

involved in politics. I decided that it was not enough to have

demonstrations, to protest, do political work, we had to do

something more rapid `` radical. I was part of the gorilla `` guerrilla

forces. I first participates in action in 1978. We had to take over

at a station. The fighting went on for hours. Helicopters were brought

in. They were shooting us. It was very confusing, very difficult. What

I remember is that I wanted to be a lizard, so I could escape through

the bushes. At the same time, you are scared but either you have two

fight for your life, so that gives you a lot of courage. `` but you

know. I participated in this first resurrection and after that I had to

disappear. I had to go underground. For the last six months of the war,

I was working. The day Somoza fled, that was the happiest day of our

lives but we had to transmit it immediately. We had to come down and

start telling the people. We were sure it had happened but we

couldn't believe it. It was like dreaming. It was a very

contradictory feelings because there was all this destruction but there

was this sense of freedom, of liberation. We couldn't wait to

start rebuilding everything. In my case, I was appointed to the

ministry of culture. We wanted to start everything right away.

Everything I did in those years was first and foremost for the benefit

of the poor people of Nicaragua. My feeling is now are that the

revolution was betrayed. Not by all the leaders but by a small group

that took over. Nicaragua went back to the way it was, except we almost

touched heaven with our hands. It was a moment in history that will

never happen again. To one of Britain's most famous

poets of World War I. As we mark the anniversary of return joining the

great Wall, Witness went to meet the son of Robert Graves, William. ``

great war. He never really recovered, I don't

think anyone did from that war. Grade, haunted eyes. Absentmindedly

declaring from white, uneven audits. He sat down `` I sat on his knee and

he said, feel here. He had a lump above his brow, which was actually a

piece of granite. On brow drooping somewhat over the eye, because of a

missile fragment. Skin deep. A foolish record of all the world

fighting. In July, 1916, which is the date of the Battle of the song,

he takes a walk into the wood, looking for overcoat and things like

that for his men. He comes across this German, a very gory sight. Upon

came along shortly afterwards in which he describes this. To you who

read my songs of war and only hear of blood and fame, I'll say, you've

heard it said before, war is hell. If you doubt the same, today I found

a certain cure for last of blood. Where propped against the shattered

trunk in a great mess of things unclean that a dead posh. Skull and

stunk, clothes and face of sodden green. Big lead, spectacles, cropped

head of drooping black blood from those and beard. He suffered from

shell shock. He had nightmares on till `` until at least ten years

after. One of the things he found very hard to accept was this idea of

joyfulness at the end of the war. When the days of rejoicing are over,

when the flags are stowed away, they would dream of another wild war to

end wars. The boys who were killed in the trenches, who fought in a

rage and no rant, we left them stretched out in the mud. They were

down with the worm in the end. Here in Majorca, he very much that

his own life. In those terms I think it was good for him. He could really

concentrate on what he really loved doing, which was writing.

There seems no doubt that the household is above all a sunny and

cheerful place. Robert Graves has had eight children at his home has

all the marks of a place where families have been raised. ``

Greaves. Four of the children were brought up in this house by Mrs

Greaves. Pouring up the coffee, William, one of her sons. We used to

go down to the beach. He carried with him his army knapsack and water

bottle. He didn't have to talk with anyone else. He had very few people

he could relate to hear. He was always working. Towards the end of

his life, the war started coming back to him. I have very strong

mental pictures, but I don't dream. I can see the whole thing as

brutally as this room. It gave you a measure of awfulness. Beyond which

you couldn't... Beyond which any awful thing happens in your later

life, a part from love affairs. When he was in a wheelchair, we would

wheel him... There would be a big noise or something and he would

always jump if something was going on. He would almost point a gun at

you. It was a very strange and to his life. But at the very end, he

was sitting in a chair and that was it. `` I was sitting. He died very

peacefully. William Graves at his father's house. In 1985 the

Greenpeace campaign ship rainbow Warrior was bombed by French secret

agents. Witness tracked down Pete Wilcox,

its captain. I like going to see and do

definitely like the component of activism. I think it makes for a

more fulfilled, useful, involved life. That's why I've been working

for environmental groups for 40 years. Rainbow Warrior was a trawler

bought by Greenpeace in 78, used for different campaigns all over the

world. I literally knew every nut and bolt on the boat. There where I

think 12 of us. We came from countries all over the world. We

were berthed in Auckland Harbour pry into leaving about two weeks later

for French Polynesia, where we intended to confront French

authorities over their nuclear testing programme.

I went to bed about 1115, 1130. I read for a little while, went to

sleep they woke up when the boat shuddered. Initially I thought we

were involved with a collision at sea. I got up, walked down to the

engine room door grey met the chief engineer. He was muttering to

himself, it's over, she is finished, done for. In 30 seconds it took me

to walk down the hall, the boat has for all intensive set `` for all

intensive purposes sunk. The first bomb blew a hole about six x six

feet in the side. Like you punched about through a paper bag. ``

punched your hand. I went down the stairs and saw the chief mate, who

was getting people up and out of there. That's when the second bomb

went off and the boat violently shook under my feet. I said, is

everyone up? He replied, yes. I said, OK, abandon ship. We have to

get out of here. The bombs going off around us and obviously the boat had

been crippled in some sort of major way and I thought it was time get

out. Fernando had been in the mess with another two people. The bomb

went off and he went to his cabin for his cameras, most likely. He

couldn't get out. He was trapped in his cabin by the second bomb. The

police dive team was unable to get through the diesel fuel and by the

time the navy arrived it had dissipated enough, so they could go

down and find him. That's when I identified him. I went back to tell

the crew that he was dead. In the South Pacific the search is on for a

group of people described by the Prime Minister of New Zealand as

ruthless, Catholic and kill us. Initially the police suspected us

but when they found the bombs had the `` in planted outside the

whole, they relaxed towards us. One of the things that surprised all of

us was that here was a first world superpower and a bunch of hippies on

an old British trawler had scared them so badly that they were quite

happy to murder us. France thought they could operate with impunity in

New Zealand and nobody would be smart enough to notice them. About

three days later or two days later, we learned the French agents had

been essentially caught red`handed. It is the worst feeling you can have

as a captain, a shipmate, as anybody. One thing I'm still angry

about is that today the French Government has never apologised for

the murder of him, either to his family, or to Greenpeace. I think

it's high time something like that happened. Pete Wilcox, who is still

sailing and campaigning for Greenpeace. Remember, you can watch

Witness every months here on BBC News Channel `` month here on BBC

News Channel or catch up on over 1,000 radio programmes. Just go to

the link below. 25 years ago the Observer journalist was arrested in

Baghdad, and accused of spying for Britain. He had a friend who was a

nurse. I work as a journalist for the Observer Newspaper and live in

London. I secretly went to one of the important military

establishments with a British person. I should have known better.

I had lived in Iraq for quite some time. I should have known what a

dangerous place it was. He said he was supposed to go to the site of an

explosion in Hillah. I had a couple of days off and offered to take him

to the site. He jumped out of the car and on the side of the road was

a heap of just ordinary soil. He scooped up a couple of samples of

this and he put them in the glove comapartment and we drove off. He

thought he had found some sort of chemical warfare. As far as I was

concerned we weren't doing anything wrong. He was pleased and he thought

he had a story. The day of my arrest someone came to me to say I was

wanted in the admin office. So I went along and the administrator was

there and he was with two men he said were from the Ministry of

Information. They wanted to know why we went to Hillah, what we did

there? I gave them the same story all the way through and they weren't

satisfied. Then I was really quite scared. I was being accuse of

espionage. He confessed by video for working for Mossad, the Israeli

intelligence. Despite this freely given confession on Iraqi

television, many people in the West are certain it was made under

duress. A revolutionary court in Iraq has sentenced to death a

journalist working for the Observer Newspaper. Bazof, it was accused of

spying and a `` Bazoft was accused of spying and a British nurse

accused of helping him was sentsanced to 15 years in prison. He

went very white when the verdict was given. I went into shock. We were

separated then and I was taken to the women's prison. I was called by

the guards. They said he was executed this morning and they said,

"I'm sorry." There's renewed pressure to help the British nurse

jailed for 15 years for helping Bazoft. There hours dragged by.

There was nothing to do or see. I felt very, very alone and scared.

The British nurse who was jailed for 15 years in Iraq on spying charges

has been freed. After four months, they said I'm being released. But

they had told me so many lies that I didn't really believe it. She said

it was marvellous to be back with her family. She was feeling

tremendous. I feel responsible for the fact that it all happened. But I

can't feel responsibility for the atrocity of hanging him. To cut off

someone's life so deliberately and unnecessarily seems to me

unbelievably cruel. Now back home in England. Now for our final film this

month. Witness travelled to rural India to speak to Ann Wright. Her

father was a British civil servant in the final days of the empire and

takes us down memory lane to a very different India of 80 years ago. We

had a wonderful childhood. I grew up in very beautiful and wild places.

My father was in the Indian Civil Service. That was before

independence. One of the smallest countries on the map is responsible

for the mightiest Commonwealth of nations in history. Now the great

cavalcade of empire makes a grand spectacle. The first place I came to

when I was one was the jungles of central India. He was posted in the

wildest place possible, because he was very junior. We came with a

nanny. And the nanny left because she said the people are peeping at

us through the holes in the tent. My father said, "No`one was going to

peep at us." Anyway, she left. Another wonderful nanny came and she

stayed. An English nanny. We collected scorpions, centipedes and

spiders, putting them under pillows and that sort of thing. We were

cleverly spoilt. Our whole life revolved around ponies and dogs and

an elephant. There were three elephants. When they put their

trunks down, you climbed onto the truck. Put the trunk up and hop up

onto the back. This is elephant orders. Stop is

Dhatt. This is very old. I don't know if they've improved or changed

it. We had a wonderful old bear who met my father when he arrived from

England. Stayed with him forever. He was hugely fat and had medals all

over because he was in the army and they used to dangle in the soup. We

were brought up by our staff, really. We loved them. It wasn't

much fun to go back to school in Somerset, I can tell you. After

rampaging around the countryside, we suddenly found ourselves in England

in the pouring rain and the freezing cold, awful place. I missed

everything about India. I missed the climate, I missed my friends, I

missed the staff, I missed the villages, our riding elephants, and

our dogs and to be confined in the very cold and remote place in

Somerset, in a very huge cold house. It was no fun. As soon as I could I

wanted to come back to India. A big question mark has been written

across the face of India. The fair`minded people here and in India

will see to it she has her rightful place in the sun. There was an

anti`British movement in the war, 1942. We were sents up for the

summer, to the his. We saw never anything. We just lived in the

paradise. The British really couldn't cope. How could they? There

was so few. My father particularly was aware that independence was on

its way and he was very anxious that it came. You can't impose yourself

on a whole nation for so long. It has to go back to the people,

doesn't it? Independence Day is a day of rejuicing. Crowds filled the

streets. Police were called out many times to restore order where

everyone ran wild with joy. I think whenever you grow up as a child ``

wherever ugrow up as a child you're more at home. At home with the

climate, the food, the people, everything. I had to get people to

help me to get it. I had the best of both worlds. It was OK by me. Anne

Wright in her Indian country garden. That's all from Witness for this

month. Next month we'll bring you five more witnesses. History told

through the eyes of people who were there. But for now, from me and from

the rest of the team at Witness, thanks for watching. Goodbye.

A considerable drop in temperature is expected by the end of the

weekend, purely because of the wind direction. The winds are something

the Met Office is warning about this weekend. Gales in the north and west

is quite unusual at this time of year. With low pressure we expect

rain but some bright spells. Let me try to pick out detail for you. The

clouds