Dream Pharma, Legal Murder And The Persecution Of Mehdi Alavi
DREAM Pharma makes drugs used to legally kill prisoners in the care of the Arizona State Prison service. Anorak brought you this news in October 2009.
Now the mainstream press have got wind of it. All over the papers is news that Dream Pharma is run by Mehdi Alavi froma space behind the Elgone Driving Academy in Horn Lane, Acton. The company sold drugs to the value of £4,528, specifically 150 vials of sodium thiopental, 180 vials of potassium chloride and 450 vials of pancuronium bromide.
Says Mr Alavi:
“I’ve no comment.”
He then commented:
“I’m not as articulate as many people. I refrain to make any comments.”
A director of Reprieve, a Clive Stafford Smith, speaks to the press. (“Reprieve uses the law to enforce the human rights of prisoners, from death row to Guantánamo Bay”):
“Dream Pharma asserts that selling these drugs was no different from selling a hammer in a hardware shop. The analogy is apposite only if we include one fact: the customer told the salesman that he planned to bludgeon someone to death with it outside the store.”
But what did Mr Alavi do wrong? He speaks to the Telegraph:
“I’ve done nothing illegal, immoral or unethical. This is a witch hunt, I am being made a scapegoat.”
He seems to have point when the paper tells readers:
Mr Alavi lives in a £750,000 house in Hampton, West London. His company made a turnover of more than £800,000 last year.
Is that relevant?
The First Post website says Mr Alavi “made a killing”.
The fact that the death sentence was abolished in Britain 45 years ago appeared to have no bearing on this nice little earner for the Acton company.
The BBC is fascinated that Mr Alavi’s shop is not a big office block nor a Lubyanka:
It would be hard to imagine a more humdrum and banal place than 176 Horn Lane in Acton, west London. Sandwiched between two blocks of flats, the modest office is home to both Elgone Driving Academy and a tiny, unconnected, pharmaceutical company that supplies the drugs used in lethal injections.
It would be better were Mr Alavi more successful and selling legal drugs from fancier premises, like a Union Carbide, say, or GlaxoSmithKline?
Clive Stafford Smith, seem to agree:
“It is shocking that Britain has allowed a fly-by-night company in the back of a driving academy to export sufficient drugs to take many lives.”
And what of the drugs sold? The Mail tells us:
Business Secretary Vince Cable banned the export of sodium thiopental in late November but has been accused of ‘unacceptable delay’ in not banning the other two drugs. Both have legitimate uses with potassium chloride used as table salt by those with low sodium tolerance.
The Mail features grainy, badly focused shots of Mr Alavi in his offices.
The Indy’s “i” paper says Mr Alavi is accused of “exporting death to America”.
Surely the paper means to say that the businessman is exporting the tools of justice to the UK’s closest ally?
Posted: 7th, January 2011 | In: Key Posts, Reviews Comments (2) | TrackBack | Permalink
