Maurice's Blog : Arrested

Maurice In County Court

Goose — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 15:04:00 GMT

Tuesday 28th July - Maurice has been taken to County Court today (handcuffed) r.e. his civil case.

It was adjourned again.

He did not have the necessary papers as he was not aware of this hearing until yesterday

He is continuing to refuse food to protest against his only option of appearing in court is by video link rather than in person.

He is very appreciative of letters that he has been receiving.

Maurice’s physical health is not good, he is 64 years old and should have been given bail as per Barry Magistrate's decision on 24th June (ie 5 weeks ago) prior to appeal by the CPS.

It is inhumane that he is being held in this manner. Maurice has been examined by a psychiatric team as directed by Judge Cook. We are not aware of any conclusions drawn.

Kirstie Kirk

In Jail Over WW1 Machine Gun

admin — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 10:03:00 GMT

Maurice Kirk wishes you to know that he is being held on remand in Cardiff Prison.

He was arrested on Monday 22 June and taken to Port Talbot Police Station. He was charged on Tuesday late evening and appeared before magistrates on Wednesday. The magistrates decided to bail him, but on CPS appeal he was sent to Cardiff prison and appeared before a judge on Thurs am. He was remanded until his prelim hearing on 6 July.

He is charged with possession of a firearm and offering it for sale. The firearm in question was a deactivated WW1 machine gun (no trigger, holes drilled into it) and made up of salvaged parts from other armaments for the sole purpose of looking good on the front of a replica DH2 aircraft.

He wishes it to be known that his arrest and search of the family home occurred after the weekend following the day he was required to exchange documents with the solicitors defending South Wales Police in his case against them for harassment. He failed to serve documents on 19th June as required by court order as the solicitors would not accept them.

Maurice has since been unable to telephone until he received money by postal order (ie after 6 days in prison). He has been visited and has said that he has no access to legal books etc.

He has a case by Jury in two months. We'll keep you posted.

USA Ban for 10 Years

Maurice Kirk — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 04:01:00 GMT

USA Ban for 10 Years

With aircraft stuck in the States, having been deported in leg irons earlier this year, I now had an appointment for an American visa. I trained it from Cardiff to Paddington to an entertaining but predictable day first in the Royal Courts of Justice and then in Grosvenor Square.

I was to witness yet another travesty of justice in that building. Vivacious Charlie Seven, seen here earlier [ photo gallery] , sitting on some protestor' motor bike outside UK's main court building, speaks to Lord Justice Collins, at length with a gallery of chronic litigants cheering her on! Just how is it defendants in her case, involving alleged theft, kidnap and harassment do not even need to turn up? How come the transcript of Judge Pumfrey's lower court was clearly at gross variance to the final judgment? She is refused a substantive hearing.

Five years she has been at it, apparently, but still believing this West-End theatre, with no ice cream or pop corn in the interval, was the place to obtain justice! ‘Justice' ah, I remember Judge Blom- Cooper telling me once, in incestuous Guernsey, that justice was a just a man made concept. Only at it for five years, a mere fledgling, I thought but a pretty one and went off to knock on Her Majesty's Treasury Solicitor's door in the very same building. Rather like the Crown Prosecution Service with its offices in the Barry police station!

No answer, not in again! Is the man never here? Now this was getting stupid. Without my being consulted, at the height of my demanding a Trial by Jury back in 2003, the HM Attorney General had ordered I be ‘certified' but needed a vast team of HM lawyers to achieve it. I was here in London, again, to try and get to the bottom of an apparent conspiracy between the South Wales Police and Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons. I had in my hand a pile of leaked internal memos between the HM Solicitor General, HM Privy Council and The Home Office, to name but a few, that had just happened to have ‘come my way'. My Lewis machine gun off the old DH2 biplane was outside as I knew she would not make it through the metal detector at the court's main door.

Feeling a trifle frustrated I stepped out into the sun shine and hailed a taxi cab for the US Embassy. Still ringing in my ears were Mr Justice Andrew Collins's quotes before me, from his government's, two year in the making, dossier suggesting my forty odd Judicial Review Applications had had ‘no merit'. "No merit"? "Had no merit"? Perish the thought. My recent £15,000 judgment against the Home Secretary for yet another false imprisonment Collins J had previously blocked for over a year! Now all I need to find is the Home Secretary's house for Patrick, my burly Irish bailiff, to seize her furniture and ‘tele'.

Now the US Embassy was a nasty experience but, perhaps, if I had stopped and thought and compared the morals applied in that building to one I had just left there would be no doubt as which one would finally come up smelling of roses.

Now to get into this US fortress in the centre of London you must first say hi to ‘Ike', not the strong wind that nearly smashed my cub, last week, sitting patiently in Texas for me. No, I mean the grand statue of General Eisenhower, Supreme Commander for the 6^th June 1944 D-day landings, the very week I was conceived.

It was no photographs allowed and at the first check point it was also made very clear my mobile phone was not getting through either. Already late for the appointment I hurriedly buried the phone in Uncle Sam's front garden but it not was until I was in the building I remembered I had forgotten to switch the dam thing off.....well there was soon much activity, to long to recount just now but as the friendly policeman said later, armed to the teeth with automatic weapons, "At least we did not need to cordon off a two mile square of London and call in the sniffer dogs"! So I hid it somewhere else.

Five and a half hours I was in that building naively thinking I could persuade the team my deportation from Texas in May had been triggered off by a little misunderstanding and a ‘communication breakdown'.

The lady referred to the US Department of Homeland Security's report from my weeks in a Texas jail, awaiting deportation. Part of which had been sent to the UK's Civil Aviation authority causing immediate suspension of my pilot's licences. She then accused me of operating around the world under an alias name, a ‘Mr William something Garcia'!

"No I did not land on Mr Bush's front lawn", "No, I was not ‘engaged in criminal activity' as written on the DHS charge sheet", "No, I was not ‘endangering the general public'", also written on the charge sheet. No visa despite my telling the embassy staff that, upon my release from Austin Lunatic Asylum, their certificate, confirming my sanity on the day of examination, stuffed well deep in my pocket, the FAA had telephoned to re assure me there had been no offence committed. My telling them my actual landing of the cub, outside the P49 prohibited zone, five miles from the US President's ranch in a field full of cows, also appeared to fall on deaf ears.

I was simply trying to deliver a ‘thank you' letter to the Commander in Chief of US Coast Guard who had just saved my life from the sharks, a hundred miles off the Dominican Republic in the Caribbean. It still makes me shudder when I recall my Texas experience. Just what is going on in this crazy, crazy world?

Maurice Arrives in France

Maurice Kirk — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 22:47:00 GMT

Just landed at St Malo harbour, Brittany, from Portsmouth on my Honda CBR 1000F to find my old car in the car park has disappeared. The French Authorities tolerate we local English leaving ‘old bangers' at the Ferry Terminal but not for this long!

My un-planned extended stay in Texas, at ‘Uncle Sam's Pleasure', has lost me not just my flying licence, but now my cut away speed model Ford Orion motor car. Talking of the CAA they have sent me some more ‘official info' from the US that reads like an Enyd Blyton children's book. Apparently it states I radioed McGregor Airport with some nonsense message about visiting a Mr Bush by aircraft. No such thing ever happened as the US Authorities very well know having all the evidence to suggest no transmission was ever made, whether by VHF Radio or ‘C' mode Transponder, while I was flying around Texas. As for the GPS they took off me and will not return, that stayed in my kit bag switched off all the way to Crawford.

I also now have a document quoting the McClellan County Police that I was 'not arrested' at the scene nor had I committed any civil or criminal offence. As I said to the boss of the legal department of Air Crew Licencing, in London, "If I had been in charge of air safety anywhere in the world with the information just sent across the ‘pond' from the US I would have marched the culprit pilot directly to Broadmoor (the UK's secure mental hospital) and thrown away the key".

Anyway it may take me years to fight through the courts so here I am looking frantically for a French ‘abinitio' pilot's licence pretty damn quick but where do I learn to fly French style and learn the lingo? Thierry of Air Journey has already found me a friend, François SIEGEL in Paris to possibly expedite the problem.

This old motor bike, resting in the long grass, once our front lawn, is supposed to get me to the South of France tomorrow but am I not getting a bit too arthritic for just a lumpy beast? As I mount her it reminds me of the French aristocracy being winched on to their jousting horses in their heavy suits of armour for the battle of Agincourt!

An Englishman in Texas

Maurice Kirk — Mon, 12 May 2008 04:01:00 GMT

25^th April 2008

I had recently landed, only to take off again, from McGregor Airport, Waco, Texas, on a most gorgeous bright April day in order to find somewhere more hospitable for the night. The weather forecast for the day had indicated scattered transient but inclement weather from cumulonimbus clouds gathering to the south. I noted these were now gathering significantly in size, charged with their electricity, soon enveloping the heavens with a much heavier dark fluffy pattern. My direction of flight in the old two seater J3 Piper Cub aircraft was somewhat settled for me as the skies to the south and east quickly turned ominous.

A downpour of rain then hit the aeroplane as I purred along at seventy miles per hour making forward vision virtually impossible. Just minutes earlier it had been streaming sun shine with not a breath of wind. Thunder and lightning soon broke out and continued long after I had decided to duck out of it into a pretty Texan meadow far below. On approach to land, following a preliminary circuit to spy out potholes, ditches and possible wire, I was greeted by a huge flower bed of pink and white flowers, weeds do doubt and a muscle bound black bull grazing with his herd at the other end of the strip. He could be sorted later.

Either under or over the power cables, straddling the long grass, was my dilemma due to a sudden change in wind direction now buffeting us both violently from the side. It also did not help my final decision as to just which field was best to get out of this turbulence, forces sufficient now to cause structural damage to the airframe. As the old adage goes, ‘never land unless you are sure you can get out again'!

However, with decision now made and committed on a somewhat rutted and possibly boggy permanent pasture, prone to flooding, I later noticed, I throttled the engine back and glided down through rain that was simply bucketing down while the lightning crackled all around illuminating the black back drop of a sky before us.

Water poured into the cockpit in the descent as both windows and doors had to be wide open in order that I could stick my head out into the slip stream to try and see with better accuracy and just where we were going to finish up was paramount in the agenda!

Safely on the ground I taxied her back close to the road and bridge with tail facing the wind hoping that, should the wind suddenly change direction again, I could rely on the raised road and trees for protection while I hurriedly reached for the ropes, hammer and the nails for picketing her down.

No sooner had I started the wind died and the sun appeared! All I could hear was a peaceful cacophony of bird sounds in the adjacent woodland. No other man made machine in sight. Only the euphoria, post flight, experienced by pilots that have just ‘broke the bonds of earth'.

The severe thunder storm had moved one, albeit but a few fields away. A Texan field, incidentally, can stretch a mile or two in all directions. A little different to my South Wales six hundred foot airstrip outside our kitchen window in the shadow of Randolph Hurst's old Norman castle.

I was then taken aback by the beauty around me. Flowers and the abundance of lush green foliage was everywhere. No different, at first site, to the farmland in the West Country of England where I had been brought up as a child. The Texan summer was yet to arrive.

One of the issues deciding which field to land in, as I circled overhead, was the sight of a huge Texan flag painted on the full length of a barn roof. Well, at least I am still in hospitable surroundings, I thought, as I reminisced on the wonderful hospitality over the past few days that I had enjoyed from Houston, San Marcos to Odessa and then back to Robert Lee and Comanche.

I decided the storm was gone and so clambered up onto the road before deciding what to do next.

Having decided which way to walk I slowly set off down the road in a westerly direction my right ankle, full of fixation screws from an old hang gliding accident, ‘telling me all about it' as the rough ground of the field had exacerbated the ensuing arthritis and, no doubt, made worse with the result of far too much good or not so good red wine over the years.

I wished to leave a message of thanks to a local ranch owner concerning the US Coast Guard, my having previously checked he was away but just might be back for the coming week end, starting tomorrow.

Another thunderstorm, as if from nowhere, soon had me drenched but wind there was not. Hard hailstones, almost the size of pigeon eggs, hurt as they bounced off my hat and shoulders. Again the shower and lightning was gone almost as quickly as it had arrived leaving the road in large puddles of crystal clear water.. The sun was again blazing down and I must have been at least a mile down the road by now from the little Cub, in the process of trying to photograph a scissor bird on a fence, when I heard a screech of tyres behind me.

I looked round to see two fast moving male white Caucasians exiting the limousine at speed. I was impressed. Both were brandishing what looked like nine millimetre Berretta pistols but the only problem was, they were both pointing at me.

Up with the hands, down spread eagled on the road, hands slowly behind your back, for handcuffs, the usual stuff, seen on television, except I was having to do it! Face down on the gravel is not comfortable nor is it easy for a sixty three year old trying to get up again with his hands behind his back.

Pockets are searched while a passport is quickly tendered by the prisoner with the vain hope of expediting this sudden new relationship thrust upon him with the well dressed ‘men in black'. What was to turn out would be a long drawn out experience, debatably quite unlawful, in a Texas Mental Institution.

As Dryden wrote, around the turn of the 17^th century:

"There is a pleasure sure in being mad that none but mad men know".

Maurice's Statement

Maurice Kirk — Mon, 12 May 2008 03:49:00 GMT

My proposed deportation is based on false information already confirmed by the British Embassy, Secret Service, FBI and the Sheriff of McLellon County. All but the British Embassy at the scene of the alleged offence.

Further, senior DHS officers, Orlando Gardona and Special Agent Jason C. Gadberry, together, told me on the date of the charge, I had landed my aircraft on a public highway thereby being in breach of section 237 (a) (4) (A) (ii) of the Immigration and Nationality Act i.e. "engaged in criminal activity which endangers public safety".

Further, on 1^st May the deputy sheriff authorised me to fly the aircraft away from the field in which I landed, incidentally more than 500ft from a public highway.

The Federal Aviation Authority confirmed to me and witnessed by two US pilots (anxious to recover the aircraft from Belville on my behalf) the landing was lawful. FAA contacts are: Mr Arnold Thermeyer, Mr Brian Troupe and Mr Doug Gould.

In respect of the incident, subject to the pilot's licence and airworthiness of the aircraft, I had committed no offence and "put you to the proof here of".

The FAA have obtained both police and secret service statements that I had landed the aircraft in a farmer's field, not a highway, in bad weather well away from the restricted P-49 zone surrounding the US president's Texas ranch.

1s PA Notams stated my right to conduct a flight from Commanche, Texas to the incident site. This was also confirmed by two US pilots at Hamilton Aerodrome (I have names).

If I had infringed any civil or criminal law or was "engaged in a criminal activity which endangers public safety or national security" how come I was offered a lift before witnesses at Austin State Hospital by the police and secret service?

The secret service area supervisor with fellow officer at A.S.H. offered me a lift to fly the aeroplane from the field unsupervised - not a lawman officially in sight, unless you include SS agents on adjacent land filming it?. If any law had been violated or was likely to be violated how was it I was left in command to fly that aircraft in any direction I liked if it had not been decided by the president's men, the FAA, the FBI, the A.S.H. court and "uncle John Cobbly and all" that I was a danger to national security.

Later that night, 200 miles away, while on a holding charge of "public intoxication" fabricated by the arresting officer, while submitting still further nonsense to the DHS, based on hearsay, I had my bailbond waivered and offered an open door. Why?

The British Embassy, Houston had just informed me that the secret service, upon hearing of DHS involvement, had offered to expedite the issues, for all the obvious reasons and had offered, without deportation, to

have me immediately released from Belville Jail and get me on a Houston flight home for the UK (my flight is rebooked Orlando 6am - London Wed 6^th May 08).

That is why Judge Terri resinder waived the $500 bailbond for my immediate release and took into account my time in custody should I be persuaded to change my plea of not guilty for a $300 fine misdeameanor strenuously denied.

The outcome of what was a perfectly harmless approach to thank the Officer in Chief of the US coastguard for recently saving my life has turned out to be a nightmare and warning to others.

I require this statement of truth to be sworn under affidavit US Regulations and be submitted to the highest authority for reconsideration.

I never wavered my right to have this case go before a US court of law (form 1-791). Copy to British Embassy please.

Thank you and God help America.

Maurice J Kirk 3^rd May 08