Phil Shiner, senior partner at Public Interest Lawyers (PIL) has been struck for professional misconduct in the £31m Al-Sweady Inquiry, and ordered to pay interim costs of £250,000.
The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal found allegations of misconduct when representing claims against British soldiers, including acting dishonestly, proven to the criminal standard of proof. A second PIL solicitor, John Dickinson, was reprimanded and ordered to pay £2,000 costs after admitting that he failed to keep the Al-Sweady clients properly informed as to the progress of the Inquiry.
Paul Philip, chief executive of the SRA, which brought the prosecution, said: “It is important that solicitors can bring forward difficult cases, but the public must be able to place their trust in them.
"His misconduct has caused real distress to soldiers, their families and to the families of Iraqi people who thought that their loved ones had been murdered or tortured. More than £30m of public funds were spent on investigating what proved to be false and dishonest allegations.
“The Lord Chief Justice said in 2014 that misleading court must be regarded by any disciplinary tribunal as one of the most serious offences that a solicitor could commit. He said it was not simply a breach of a rule of a game, but a fundamental affront to a rule designed to safeguard the fairness and justice of proceedings.”
Shiner had claimed British troops unlawfully killed, tortured and mistreated Iraqi citizens, and spent years pursuing claims. In 2014, the allegations against the troops were found to be “deliberate lies”.
The raft of allegations that were proven against him included paying referral fees to an agent, Mazin Younis, to directly approach potential clients arising out of the Battle of Danny Boy in Iraq in 2004. He also paid money to Younis to persuade him to change his evidence to the Inquiry on the issue of how the clients had been identified.
Shiner did not attend the tribunal hearing.
