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Post by fretslider on Mar 3, 2015 17:03:20 GMT -5
RICHARD LITTLEJOHN
Hallelujah! Finally, the Government is retaliating against Left-wing law firms who make vexatious allegations of ‘war crimes’ against blameless British troops. This column has argued for years that the lawyers involved should be forced to pay the full costs of the unsuccessful cases they bring against members of the Armed Forces.
Now the Ministry of Defence has decided to do exactly that. On the orders of the Prime Minister, it is preparing to sue Birmingham-based Public Interest Lawyers (PIL) for millions of pounds and seeking to have its founder, Phil Shiner, struck off. As regular readers may recall, for the past dozen years self-proclaimed socialist Shiner has made a fat living pursuing allegations of abuse by British soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. His representatives have been greedily drumming up business in the backstreets of Basra and beyond, all funded out of the legal aid budget.
It is estimated that PIL has been paid more than £3 million by British taxpayers in relation to claims which have subsequently been proved to be false. The MoD says that Shiner’s outfit and another firm, Leigh Day, deliberately misled a public inquiry into alleged atrocities in Iraq. Last December, the inquiry concluded that all the claims of murder and torture against our troops were ‘wholly without foundation’ and ‘entirely the product of deliberate lies, reckless speculation and ingrained hostility’ from the Iraqi witnesses.
The five-year investigation, which cost £31 million, also ruled that the men who had allegedly been mistreated were not innocent farmers, as their lawyers had maintained, but enemy fighters who were killed or captured in a ferocious firefight known as the Battle of Danny Boy. Furthermore, the MoD says that PIL had known the claims were untrue for at least a year but didn’t inform the inquiry chairman until the final day’s evidence was being taken. Failure to withdraw the accusations had led to more than 100 additional witnesses being interviewed unnecessarily, at a cost of £780,000.
Shiner also stands accused of employing agents to make ‘unsolicited approaches’ to Iraqi civilians and encouraging them to bring claims, in a clear breach of the solicitors’ code of conduct. Both PIL and Leigh Day are already under investigation by the Solicitors Regulatory Authority. And last May, two High Court judges called for them to be stripped of the right to receive legal aid. Not before time.
When Piers Morgan published fake photographs of troops apparently torturing Iraqi suspects, it rightly cost him his job as editor of the Daily Mirror. So why should Shiner be allowed to carry on bringing equally bogus claims designed to smear British servicemen and women, all at taxpayers’ expense? PIL is a Left-wing version of those spiv, get-rich-quick law firms who advertise on daytime television, promising compensation to anyone who has slipped over in a supermarket or fallen off a ladder at work. Unlike those no-win, no-fee outfits, though, Shiner always gets paid out of legal aid: win, lose or draw.
Quite apart from the cost to the public purse, the emotional distress caused to those falsely accused — and to their families and colleagues-in-arms — is incalculable. A senior British officer wrote to the MoD: ‘How do we quantify the trauma of soldiers who, having been through particularly gruesome and harrowing experiences fighting for their country, are forced to repeatedly re-live those experiences by the likes of Phil Shiner?’
He also said in an email that ‘decent, brave and honest men’ had been subjected to severe family strain and marriage break-up as a result of spurious allegations which, in some cases, have been hanging over them for a decade. Several of PIL’s targets have suffered mental health problems, and one is reported to have been admitted to the Priory Clinic and put on suicide watch.
I first crossed swords with Shiner on my old Sky TV show after the invasion of Iraq when he was little more than an obscure provincial solicitor with an eye for the main chance. Since then, he has specialised in claims aimed at discrediting our armed forces, earning him the accolade Human Rights Lawyer of the Year in 2004. PIL is believed to have at least 1,500 further cases pending. Last year, Shiner claimed that 85 Iraqis were being held illegally at a ‘secret’ prison camp in Afghanistan, which he dubbed ‘Britain’s Guantanamo Bay’.
There was no evidence that anyone had been mistreated, and he knew perfectly well that the facility wasn’t secret because he himself had brought a case in connection with the camp in open court in 2010. That didn’t stop him being wheeled out on Radio 4’s Today programme to peddle his demonstrably false charges against the Army. Throughout his career he has found a willing accomplice in the BBC, which has always been prepared to give him a platform to smear British soldiers. He was allowed to air his untrue accusations of abuse of Iraqis in a Panorama special.
It is nothing short of monstrous that public money, whether from legal aid or the licence fee, can be used to advance vindictive and politically motivated legal actions against soldiers putting their lives on the line for their country. But, as I’ve long argued, this is simply part of the much wider human rights racket; a scandalous conspiracy by unscrupulous Left-wing lawyers designed to turn justice upside down.
Most of the actions brought by the human rights parasites are part of a concerted assault on our institutions, aimed at demolishing traditional notions of fair play and common decency.
So let’s hope that the MoD succeeds in recovering millions of pounds from PIL, and manages to get smug Shiner struck off. A victory might deter other firms from using legal aid to bring similar vexatious claims. But I wouldn’t start the celebrations just yet.
PIL insists it has always acted in accordance with its ‘professional obligations’. Then there is always the nagging concern that the legal establishment will close ranks. And when PIL did belatedly admit that there was no evidence to support its allegations of abuse, the inquiry chairman congratulated them on behaving ‘in the highest traditions of the English bar’. I’m sure that came as a great comfort to all those innocent soldiers who have had their lives ruined by Shiner’s shysters.
www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2976731/Let-s-shyster-shiner-says-RICHARD-LITTLEJOHN.html#ixzz3TMWjIqkd
Hallelujah! Finally, the Government is retaliating against Left-wing law firms who make vexatious allegations of ‘war crimes’ against blameless British troops. This column has argued for years that the lawyers involved should be forced to pay the full costs of the unsuccessful cases they bring against members of the Armed Forces.
Now the Ministry of Defence has decided to do exactly that. On the orders of the Prime Minister, it is preparing to sue Birmingham-based Public Interest Lawyers (PIL) for millions of pounds and seeking to have its founder, Phil Shiner, struck off. As regular readers may recall, for the past dozen years self-proclaimed socialist Shiner has made a fat living pursuing allegations of abuse by British soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. His representatives have been greedily drumming up business in the backstreets of Basra and beyond, all funded out of the legal aid budget.
It is estimated that PIL has been paid more than £3 million by British taxpayers in relation to claims which have subsequently been proved to be false. The MoD says that Shiner’s outfit and another firm, Leigh Day, deliberately misled a public inquiry into alleged atrocities in Iraq. Last December, the inquiry concluded that all the claims of murder and torture against our troops were ‘wholly without foundation’ and ‘entirely the product of deliberate lies, reckless speculation and ingrained hostility’ from the Iraqi witnesses.
The five-year investigation, which cost £31 million, also ruled that the men who had allegedly been mistreated were not innocent farmers, as their lawyers had maintained, but enemy fighters who were killed or captured in a ferocious firefight known as the Battle of Danny Boy. Furthermore, the MoD says that PIL had known the claims were untrue for at least a year but didn’t inform the inquiry chairman until the final day’s evidence was being taken. Failure to withdraw the accusations had led to more than 100 additional witnesses being interviewed unnecessarily, at a cost of £780,000.
Shiner also stands accused of employing agents to make ‘unsolicited approaches’ to Iraqi civilians and encouraging them to bring claims, in a clear breach of the solicitors’ code of conduct. Both PIL and Leigh Day are already under investigation by the Solicitors Regulatory Authority. And last May, two High Court judges called for them to be stripped of the right to receive legal aid. Not before time.
When Piers Morgan published fake photographs of troops apparently torturing Iraqi suspects, it rightly cost him his job as editor of the Daily Mirror. So why should Shiner be allowed to carry on bringing equally bogus claims designed to smear British servicemen and women, all at taxpayers’ expense? PIL is a Left-wing version of those spiv, get-rich-quick law firms who advertise on daytime television, promising compensation to anyone who has slipped over in a supermarket or fallen off a ladder at work. Unlike those no-win, no-fee outfits, though, Shiner always gets paid out of legal aid: win, lose or draw.
Quite apart from the cost to the public purse, the emotional distress caused to those falsely accused — and to their families and colleagues-in-arms — is incalculable. A senior British officer wrote to the MoD: ‘How do we quantify the trauma of soldiers who, having been through particularly gruesome and harrowing experiences fighting for their country, are forced to repeatedly re-live those experiences by the likes of Phil Shiner?’
He also said in an email that ‘decent, brave and honest men’ had been subjected to severe family strain and marriage break-up as a result of spurious allegations which, in some cases, have been hanging over them for a decade. Several of PIL’s targets have suffered mental health problems, and one is reported to have been admitted to the Priory Clinic and put on suicide watch.
I first crossed swords with Shiner on my old Sky TV show after the invasion of Iraq when he was little more than an obscure provincial solicitor with an eye for the main chance. Since then, he has specialised in claims aimed at discrediting our armed forces, earning him the accolade Human Rights Lawyer of the Year in 2004. PIL is believed to have at least 1,500 further cases pending. Last year, Shiner claimed that 85 Iraqis were being held illegally at a ‘secret’ prison camp in Afghanistan, which he dubbed ‘Britain’s Guantanamo Bay’.
There was no evidence that anyone had been mistreated, and he knew perfectly well that the facility wasn’t secret because he himself had brought a case in connection with the camp in open court in 2010. That didn’t stop him being wheeled out on Radio 4’s Today programme to peddle his demonstrably false charges against the Army. Throughout his career he has found a willing accomplice in the BBC, which has always been prepared to give him a platform to smear British soldiers. He was allowed to air his untrue accusations of abuse of Iraqis in a Panorama special.
It is nothing short of monstrous that public money, whether from legal aid or the licence fee, can be used to advance vindictive and politically motivated legal actions against soldiers putting their lives on the line for their country. But, as I’ve long argued, this is simply part of the much wider human rights racket; a scandalous conspiracy by unscrupulous Left-wing lawyers designed to turn justice upside down.
Most of the actions brought by the human rights parasites are part of a concerted assault on our institutions, aimed at demolishing traditional notions of fair play and common decency.
So let’s hope that the MoD succeeds in recovering millions of pounds from PIL, and manages to get smug Shiner struck off. A victory might deter other firms from using legal aid to bring similar vexatious claims. But I wouldn’t start the celebrations just yet.
PIL insists it has always acted in accordance with its ‘professional obligations’. Then there is always the nagging concern that the legal establishment will close ranks. And when PIL did belatedly admit that there was no evidence to support its allegations of abuse, the inquiry chairman congratulated them on behaving ‘in the highest traditions of the English bar’. I’m sure that came as a great comfort to all those innocent soldiers who have had their lives ruined by Shiner’s shysters.
www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2976731/Let-s-shyster-shiner-says-RICHARD-LITTLEJOHN.html#ixzz3TMWjIqkd