Starmer argued for radical cleric Abu Qatada in deportation fight
It is important voters know Labour leader’s past career and who he represented as a lawyer, says Tory minister ‘It’s hard for [voters] to work out... but you can see from his record where his heart lies on some things’
SIR KEIR STARMER represented Abu Qatada in court as the notorious hate preacher fought to avoid deportation from the UK.
Qatada, described as Osama bin Laden’s ambassador in Europe, was represented by Sir Keir at a hearing in 2008.
For a decade, UK authorities had fought legal battles to have Qatada extradited to Jordan where he was wanted on terrorism charges.
It comes as Sir Keir and John Healey, the shadow defence secretary, will visit British troops deployed near the Russian border and stress Labour’s commitment to Nato on a visit to Estonia.
Sir Keir, who polls suggest is on track to enter No 10 after next year’s general election, will pledge that a government led by him would ensure the UK plays a leading role in defending the High North and other regions seeing increased Russian aggression.
Sir Keir, then a leading barrister, was one of a number of human rights lawyers who represented Qatada in myriad hearings. The future Labour leader, instructed by Qatada’s solicitors Birnberg Peirce, the leading human rights law firm, acted for Qatada at a Special Immigration Appeals Commission (Siac) hearing in June 2008.
Two years earlier, Charles Clarke, the then home secretary, had ordered Qatada’s deportation, sparking years of legal wrangling. Theresa May finally succeeded in forcing Qatada’s return to Jordan
in 2013. The total cost to the taxpayer of the long-running case was a reported £1.7 million. A year later, Qatada was acquitted in a Jordanian court of terror charges.
In the 2006 hearing, Sir Keir argued a technical point of law as part of longrunning proceedings in which Qatada tried to resist both deportation and imprisonment. Sir Keir had argued that hearings concerning secret material being used against Qatada should be held in public. He also argued that Qatada’s civil rights – including the right to receive state benefits – were incorporated in English domestic law.
Mr Justice Mitting threw out Sir Keir’s arguments, describing one part of his appeal as “fallacious”. At the
SIR KEIR STARMER has been branded a member of the “human rights glitterati” by veterans minister Johnny Mercer for advising Phil Shiner, the lawyer struck off for dishonesty.
The Labour leader is listed as an adviser to Mr Shiner in a 2005 legal bid to prevent peace activists’ taxes being used to fund the military. A year later, Sir Keir was instructed by Mr Shiner to represent a suspected terrorist suing the UK Government for unlawful detention in Iraq.
Mr Shiner was struck off as a solicitor in 2017 for 22 charges of professional misconduct, including dishonesty. The 66 year-old, once named human rights lawyer of the year, has subsequently been charged with four counts of fraud, which he denies, in a case expected to go to trial in the autumn of 2024.
As a solicitor he had represented hundreds of Iraqis who made allegations including murder and torture against UK service personnel. In 2004, the Al Sweady inquiry cleared soldiers of the most serious allegations of unlawful killing, finding they had been the victims of “deliberate lies” told by some Iraqi witnesses.
Sir Keir’s time as a barrister in private practice – prior to taking up the post of Director of Public Prosecutions in 2008 – is coming under intense scrutiny in the run up to next year’s election with the Labour leader heavy favourite to become the next prime minister.
Johnny Mercer, the veterans minister and member of Rishi Sunak’s Cabinet, said: “It’s important that people know who they are voting for. The big challenge for Starmer is that it’s very hard for them to work out who he is but you can see from his record where his heart lies on some important matters.
“And in the case of Phil Shiner it was a huge misjudgment by the human rights glitterati. They fawned over him. They even made him human rights lawyer of the year but he went on to destroy the lives of hundreds of veterans.”
Sir Keir is listed as a member of the legal team put together by Shiner to advise the Peace Tax Seven. The group complained that “we are all conscripted through our taxes” and called on the public to “join our struggle to liberate this money to finance peaceful ways of resolving conflicts”.
The case went to the High Court in 2005 after the seven conscientious objectors sought a judicial review of the Government’s refusal to allow them to opt out of funding military operations. The activists had wanted that portion of their taxes to pay for other policies.
On the Peace Tax Seven’s campaign website, set up at the time, Mr Shiner is listed as the solicitor bringing the case and Sir Keir is listed as one of the barristers hired to give advice.
Their lawyers argued the Government was in breach of Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which guarantees “freedom to manifest one’s religion or beliefs”. They claimed UK tax policies were in contravention of their beliefs and so it was wrong to be forced into “paying others to kill on our behalf ”.
A year after the case was lost, Sir Keir again acted for Shiner and his firm Public Interest Lawyers – this time representing suspected terrorist Hilal Al-jedda. The suspect had been detained in a British facility in Basra for three years, accused of “recruiting terrorists outside of Iraq with a view to the commission of atrocities there”.
Acting under the instruction of Public Interest Lawyers, which is now defunct, Starmer headed the legal team which sued the Government over a breach to Mr Al-jedda’s human rights.
In 2007, the House of Lords ruled the detention of the suspected terrorist was lawful, but that ruling was then overturned in 2011 by the European courts.
Mr Al-jedda was born in Iraq but given asylum in the UK in 2000. He was deprived of his British citizenship twice – once in 2007 by the then Labour Government and again in 2013 by Theresa May. The Home Office alleged he was “committed to Islamist extremism and associated with Islamist extremists”.
The suspected terrorist, now in his sixties, has never been convicted of any offence and is currently thought to be living in Turkey.