A man who went to prison for hiring a hitman to kill his estranged wife and her partner is mounting an appeal against his conviction, claiming he was set up by a News of the World reporter and an acquaintance.
Jasbinder Pal Heer, from the West Midlands, was exposed in the now defunct Sunday newspaper in July 2007 after meeting Neville Thurlbeck, a reporter with the paper whom he believed was a hitman. The paper carried a prominent story headlined “Kill my wife and her lover for £3K” that explained how it had uncovered Heer’s “evil plot” and had passed on recordings of the meeting to the police.
Following the story, Heer was jailed for five and a half years after a jury found him guilty of soliciting the murder of his estranged wife, Monica Aheer, and her new partner, Harsarup Lal Mehmi.
But Heer, who was released from custody in April 2010, protests his innocence and claims he was “coached” into saying he wanted his wife dead by a family friend, the prosecution’s chief witness, Ronald Sutton, a career criminal.
Now, following the closure of the newspaper and Thurlbeck’s conviction for illegally intercepting telephone calls during the recent phone-hacking trials, Heer is launching an appeal that is likely to place further scrutiny on the way the News of the World operated.
The move comes as the Crown Prosecution Service begins contacting defendants in 25 cases where concerns have arisen about evidence given by the paper’s former star journalist, Mazher Mahmood. The decision to contact defendants was made after the CPS reviewed prosecutions following the collapse of the trial of former X Factor judge Tulisa Contostavlos in July.
Normally someone convicted of a crime has 28 days to mount an appeal after they are sentenced. But in special cases, when new material has come to light that may help their case, for example, they can launch an appeal later on. Heer filed his appeal last year but held back until the conclusion of Operation Weeting, the police investigation into endemic phone-hacking at the News of the World. Since his conviction, Heer has been barred from having any direct contact with his son, although they exchange cards and letters. According to the grounds of the appeal, seen by the Observer, Heer claims he was set up by Thurlbeck and Sutton during the meeting in a hotel in Coventry. He also alleges that he was “in fear” of Sutton who had told him what to say during the meeting.
Heer’s legal team claim Thurlbeck’s role in the phone-hacking scandal, for which he received a six-month prison sentence, raises “clear question marks over the integrity of the investigation which led to the prosecution of the applicant and the safety of his conviction”.
The appeal also cites the judgment of Mr Justice Eady following a claim brought by Max Mosley against the News of the World after it revealed that the motor sport supremo took part in an orgy with prostitutes. Eady set out a detailed critique of Thurlbeck’s credibility, concluding that “it would not be safe to place unqualified reliance on his evidence as to what took place”.
In his appeal submission, Heer’s barrister, Patrick O’Connor of Doughty Street Chambers, said the “fresh evidence” that had arisen since his client’s conviction rendered it unsafe and that there was evidence that “the News of the World and Thurlbeck, in particular, were prepared to stop at nothing in order to publish an exclusive story”. Crucial to the case is a telephone conversation between Sutton and Heer, the contents of which are disputed by both men.
Suggestions that the jury should examine the credibility of Sutton were played down at the trial.
According to Heer’s legal team, Sutton, who was paid around £3,500 by the paper for his role in convicting Heer, “had a truly prodigious criminal record”. At the time of the trial he had convictions for 81 offences stretching over 40 years. Of these, 59 were for dishonesty and seven were for various violent offences, including kidnap, wounding, assault with intent to rob, and harassment.
However, the judge told the jury that the convictions “may have little relevance on that important issue of the defendant’s intention”.
According to Heer’s legal team, “the original exhibits in the case have been destroyed and only a relatively modest amount of paperwork still remains”.
At the end of the recorded meeting in the hotel room, after Heer had left, Sutton said to Thurlbeck: “I mean he said exactly what I wanted to, did he not?” In response, Thurlbeck said: “Yes, I do not care how you do it, I do not want to know.” Sutton then said: “I just want him to fuck off … he’s in the net as we used to say in the good old days, ain’t it?”
A spokeswoman for Biteback, Thurlbeck’s publishers, said he would be putting his side of the story into the public domain in the near future.
“The judge in the court case said he was satisfied there was no doubt in his mind that Heer had solicited Mr Thurlbeck to murder both his ex-wife and her lover,” the spokeswoman said. “Mr Thurlbeck taped and videoed the meeting and the judge said the transcript made ‘chilling reading’. The whole episode is recounted in vivid detail in his book Tabloid Secrets which Biteback will be publishing next April.”
