Lord Hermer launched an attack on British soldiers after his war crimes case against them was exposed as a lie, telling human right lawyers they had done more good than the soldiers they were hounding with falsehoods. The Telegraph has the story.
Emails obtained by the Telegraph show the Attorney General telling human rights lawyers they had done more good for society than the decorated soldiers they had falsely accused of murder and torture.
Sir Keir Starmer’s closest Cabinet ally sent the message after key evidence emerged at a public inquiry that fatally undermined his claims that British troops tortured and executed civilians in southern Iraq.
In correspondence with colleagues, Lord Hermer said the falsely accused soldiers could never claim to have “made a real difference to people’s lives”, unlike the lawyers who had pursued the case for a decade.
Other emails show him acknowledging it was “inevitable that some of the Iraqi cases were going to collapse” and dismissing anger from the military as “venting”.
The disclosures are likely to intensify pressure on Sir Keir to dismiss Lord Hermer over his “substantial” role in the scandal around the 2004 Battle of Danny Boy, in which British troops were wrongly branded as murderers and torturers for years.
The Telegraph revealed last week that the Attorney General continued pursuing the Danny Boy case as lead counsel on a no-win, no-fee basis despite repeated warnings that his Iraqi clients were lying.
A £31 million public inquiry, chaired by Sir Thayne Forbes, later concluded the allegations were “deliberate lies” driven by “ingrained hostility” towards the British Army.
In an email dated April 20th 2014, Lord Hermer expressed support for a junior solicitor who had failed to recognise the significance of a bombshell document that emerged during the inquiry. The document fatally undermined the Iraqis’ case by proving they were not innocent farmers, as they claimed, but in fact members of the Mahdi Army, an Iran-backed militia that fought British forces.
Lord Hermer wrote to Anna Crowther, a solicitor at Leigh Day: “You should not feel too low about it. There is a much more important big picture: you are making an extraordinary contribution to securing redress for torture victims in Iraq. Your hard work, dedication and ability are outstanding and have made a real difference to people’s lives – that is not something that Forbes, Neil Garnham or his clients can ever say.”
Sir Neil Garnham, now a High Court judge, was lead counsel for the British troops at the public inquiry – known as the Al-Sweady Inquiry – and his “clients” were the soldiers falsely accused by the Iraqis.
Lord Hermer claimed last week that he had become involved in the case partly to give soldiers “the opportunity to show their innocence through a proper investigation”, but the latest email appears to undermine that defence.
On Sunday, a former head of the Army, who led operations in Basra after the Iraq war, said Lord Hermer’s position was now untenable, having shown a “disdain for soldiers on the front line”.
L/Cpl Brian Wood, who won a Military Cross at the Battle of Danny Boy but was later falsely accused of war crimes, added that Lord Hermer was clearly unfit to remain in post.
Worth reading in full.
Discussion
Comments
This week across the site:
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to the Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
Hermer will not go because he is a good friend of Keir. He is, of course, a traitor as well.
Interesting day for this story to come to light, particularly the rudeness to the legal team representing the soldiers. I hope Mr Justice Garnham, to whom I believe the insult is directed, doesn’t harbour grudges, as I believe he is the judge sitting in the trial of the gentlemen accused of setting fire to the property of the Prime Minister starting today 🤔
As Attorney General does he too have his own generous pension scheme protected, like Starmer’s, by Act of Parliament? There must surely be a record of Hermer saying how pleased and relieved he was that our brave and patriotic service men and maybe women had been falsely accused. Someone in his position would normally want to show respect and gratitude to people prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice for our country. Not to do so would simply look treacherous, would it not?
You’re assuming too much about political positions people ought to have. If Hermer has any communist leanings – and that’s very likely – he’ll regard professional soldiers of a state not ruled by communists simply as the hitmen of the (capitalist) oppressors. He may not say so openly because Britain hasn’t yet been so thoroughly leftified as Germany where such a statement from a politician would barely raise an eyebrow but he probably considers this a deficiency to overcome.
Since communism and its derivatives are legal in Britain, he’s perfectly entitled to have such opinions, no matter how unpleasant this may seem to people who aren’t communists.
Stop defending that Evil Treasonous B*stard, who should be put in a small, wobbly boat on the Thames, along with Starmer & his whole Cabinet, and transported to prison cells in the Tower, passing through The Traitor’s Gate.
I’m not defending him. I’m just pointing out that this is a political discussion and not one of good versus evil and for as long as Hermer’s political opinions are legal, the proper way to decide the outcome of it is via the ballot box.
There’s no reason why Hermer would need a defense for having worked as lawyer and losing a court case (or some court cases) while doing so 22 years ago. The investigation cleared the matter up, guilty parties were punished and innocent parties rehabilitated. No news here.
Hermer is exactly as entitled to have a disdain for soldiers as soldiers are entitled to have a disdain for him. Depending on one’s political leanings, this might not exactly mark him as nice or trustworthy guy but he isn’t required to be either of both to anyone.
The conflict of interest arises from the fact that this specimen has the close ear and is a confidant and supporter of the current “Prime Minister” – someone who should, in any sane world, be behind the troops 100%.
That’s what makes its post untenable, not the fact it is a slimy filthbag – that’s just expected.
“Depending on one’s political leanings, this might not exactly mark him as nice or trustworthy guy but he isn’t required to be either of both to anyone.”
I don’t know. Personally I’d quite like my Attorney General, the Rt Hon Lord bloody Hermer, to at least try the “trustworthy” bit?
That’s not an absolute category. Whether or not someone’s trustworthy depends and who has or wants to trust him with what. He obviously isn’t a trustworthy advocate of British war veterans. But that”s just one subset of the population.
^^
should have been on who and not and who.
Fair point
No, it isn’t. He has obviously not taken time to read the wiki article on Hermer, with its extensive list of appalling cases in which Hermer’s been involved, forever helping Enemies of the British People, in whose House of Lords he is scandalously allowed to sit.
RW is just playing Nitpicking Devil’s Advocate for his own amusement.
Indeed I haven’t, because it’s not anyhow relevant. Hermer hasn’t broken any laws (as far as I know, conjecture based on the fact that he’s in government) and hence, he was perfectly entitled to do what he did, no matter how politically disagreeable someone may find that.
I think it’s disagreeable. But Keir Starmer or J. Random Labour-Voter most certainly don’t.,
Don’t take the bait.
That you refuse to accept that your political opinions are just political opinions doesn’t change the fact that they are. To Hermer and his associates, British soldiers are just paid killers the British state uses to force others to do its usually nefarious bidding who’d otherwise peacefully do something else.
I’m not saying that this is correct or proper – in fact, I very much believe the exact opposite of it – but such is the nature of the people who presently govern this country. This series of articles thus amounts to someone pointing at a leopard and crying at the very top of his voice: “But can’t you see it has spots!” Indeed it has. Everybody knew this already and there’s no reason to make such an awful amount of noise about it.
Hermer is responsible for quite few people going to jail for months or years for making critical statements about UK immigration policy and these people have suffered more than the soldiers of 22 years ago who won their court cases, injust as they might have been.
Of course his position is untenable, but he won’t go because he is “doing good things for the world “and is of course “the right thing to do”.
He is like diarrhea – nasty, slimy, foul smelling and sticks to everything. Usually people recover from it, but in his case it seems to be a chronic affliction.