Sheppard said whatever anger he has is mostly directed at British authorities. His feelings about America, he says, are not so much anger "as sadness and disappointment, as we were led to believe that we would be sympathetically received here by virtue of its tradition of free speech."
That miscalculation aside, the men don't know when they will be returned to Britain, and U.S. authorities won't say.
In denying asylum, Peters ruled that the men hadn't shown they had been persecuted in the past or likely to face future persecution.
Sheppard and Whittle had hoped their story would attract media attention, but that never materialized.
"I think it has very wide ramifications," Leichty says of their convictions. "I don't share their views or the way they communicate their views, but I certainly don't think we should be incarcerating people for what they did."
Sheppard said he and Whittle are merely waiting for a middle-of-the-night wake-up and a quick trip to the airport.
"We're not cowed and we're not repentant," Sheppard says. "We have the right even to make mistakes. We could be wrong, it's not inconceivable. We have a right to be wrong. All we're doing is speaking our minds."
Whittle says he isn't keen on making a career out of being a political prisoner in England. "Simon is from Yorkshire," he says. "People from Yorkshire are strong-willed. I'm not from Yorkshire. He sticks to his guns. I don't have his willpower and tenacity."
After 11 months in custody, Whittle is not sure anymore that he and Sheppard would have remained free even if they had quietly gone through customs, left LAX and found a lawyer to handle their asylum request. "Once they became aware of who we were and that we came to the U.S. to flee," Whittle says, "we would have ended up in detention."
That is how it played out. Coming to America has been a bust.
"We've never seen California but through bars," Whittle says.
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dana.parsons@latimes.com
