"PICTURE the scene from this man's of view," a barrister asked. "You have seen the size of him. He is waiting in his room after retreating and locking the door which is being broken down by four or five drunken Irishmen shouting and swearing. They are hellbent on inflicting on him serious harm. From their threats, they maybe out to out to kill him."
Urging them to acquit a landlord accused of murder, he urged: "Can you imagine the terror that must have gone through this defendant. What else could he have done to defend himself?"
Mr Leigh contended at the committal proceedings that in the circumstances, Mohmmed Bostan had used justifiable force to protect himself.
His plea was upheld by Southampton magistrates and he walked free from the dock - and straight into hidings for fear of reprisals.
Mr Bostan, 35, had been charged, following a fracas in which 27-year-old factory worker Christopher Noonan had died from a knife wound on January 1, 1974. It had erupted after the group of Irishmen had interrupted the daily prayers of the Derby Road landlord from their drunken singing and considerable noise in the room of one of his lodgers.
Karen Brosnan, who lived at a flat in the house, described how three Irishmen had kicked down his door and "pounced like a pack of lions on the poor man."
She told the hearing Mr Bostan, a very religious who every afternoon at about 4pm spent half an hour praying, heard him arguing with Noonan who racially abused him.
"Mr Bostan was pleading with him to go backstairs because he did not want any trouble. Noonan would not listen and swung a punch at him. Mr Bostan grabbed a piece of stair railing and swiped it down over Noonan's head. Noonan's head got busted."
He ran downstairs screaming and she heard him shout: "Give me a knife and I will kill (him)."
Mrs Brosnan then described he and two others came up the stairs and "dived on that poor little man. They jumped on top of him and the light in the room went off. I saw these drunken Irishmen whacking the hell out of him."
After a friend went to get the police, she saw Noonan come out of the room holding his side, struggle along the pavement and then collapse just as a police Panda arrived. Mr Bostan was leaning against her wall, standing by a waste paper bin, covered in blood. "I burst out crying because he would not hurt a fly."
At the conclusion of the evidence, Mr Leigh submitted the landlord's fists would have been no use to him against the 6ft tall Noonan. "He would have needed some instrument to defend himself. In my submission, he was justified in using the knife which he had not taken up there but which happened to be lying there in his workshop."
After the Bench heard him accuse the other Irishmen of "lying through their teeth" in their testimony, they stopped the case, with the chairman Edith Stock saying: "A large amount of the evidence we have heard has been unreliable, and we cannot find any reliable evidence to commit the case to Crown Court on either a charge of murder or manslaughter."
Mr Leigh said the witnesses could now face charges as a result of the court's decision, which prosecutor Jeremy Collingwood accepted might be considered by the Director of Public Prosecutions.
After the hearing, Mrs Bostan issued a statement through Bernard Chill, her husband's solicitor: "My client will not be staying in Southampton and he is not saying where he is going because there is some fear of reprisals. He is very happy with the court's decision but now he just wants to live in peace."
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