Torture claim lawyers ‘who falsely hounded British troops’
LAWYERS pursued claims of torture and murder against British troops despite having evidence for nearly nine years that their clients were members of a “murderous” Iraqi militia, a tribunal heard yesterday.
Law firm Leigh Day and solicitors Martyn Day, Sapna Malik and Anna Crowther face misconduct charges over the Iraq War legal claims.
The case also alleges prohibited payments of £75,000 to an Iraqi intermediary, Mazin Younis.
Among the charges is an allegation of improper conduct at a 2008 press conference involving recently struckoff lawyer Phil Shiner, where it was claimed British soldiers abused Iraqi civilians during a 2004 battle.
Representing the Solicitors Regulation Authority, Timothy Dutton, QC, said in his opening summary that the allegations were “false” and should not have been “advanced in the public domain”.
He said since 2004 the firm had been in possession of the “OMS detainee list” which related to the Shia militia group Office of the Martyr Al Sadr.
This undermined their clients’ claims that they were innocent bystanders in the 2004 battle, he said, adding: “It demonstrated that they were members of a murderous militia who had ambushed British soldiers.”
Mr Dutton said if the list had been made available to others, it is unlikely that Mr Shiner’s firm Public Interest Lawyers would have felt able to pursue the claim for legal aid, that legal aid would have been granted and the £31million public Al-Sweady inquiry would have been ordered.
The document was not passed on to anyone else until 2013. In an internal email, Mr Day said he had not seen it before, and that within “one second” of reading it, its “massive significance” would have been clear.
Had he read the document he would have “packed away the file immediately”, heard the tribunal.
Mr Dutton said the respondents “did not review the materials with sufficient care”.
Leigh Day received £9.5million in fees from all the Iraqi claims they brought, heard the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal in London.
In 2014 the Al-Sweady inquiry concluded that the most serious allegations made against British soldiers were “wholly without foundation”.
Mr Day, Ms Malik and the law firm face 19 charges, while Ms Crowther faces an allegation of destroying a handwritten translation of the list. They deny all the charges.
The case continues.