The law firm Leigh Day failed for more than five years to reveal that its Iraqi clients pursuing claims against British soldiers were members of a “murderous” Shia militia, the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal has been told.
Opening prosecution of the firm, Timothy Dutton QC, for the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA), said that for many years lawyers from Leigh Day maintained that those who had been killed or mistreated were “innocent Iraqi civilians”.
It is alleged that the law firm possessed evidence demonstrating that many of its clients were members of the Mahdi army and were pursuing “dishonest claims for improper purposes”.
“At no stage did Martyn Day or Sapna Malik [of Leigh Day] stand back and carry out inquiries to check whether they were carrying out improper claims on behalf of the Mahdi army,” Dutton said.
“If [Leigh Day] had discharged their duties, British soldiers and their families would not have had to endure the torment of years of worry.”
The tribunal was told that as early as 2008 Leigh Day knew that one of its clients, Khudur al-Sweady, was a senior member of the Mahdi army and that he had threatened the firm’s agent in Iraq, Abu Jamal.
“Leigh Day knew that if they could pursue the claims to a successful conclusion, then they would receive large costs and they could recoup their expenditure on foreign trips,” Dutton said.
Leigh Day and three of its solicitors face a combined 20 charges, including one of dishonesty. The firm’s partners, Martyn Day and Sapna Malik, face multiple charges; another solicitor, Anna Crowther, faces one charge of destroying an original document.
The misconduct allegations mainly centre on claims that British soldiers tortured and murdered Iraqi detainees after the so-called Battle of Danny Boy near Basra in 2004.
Fighting had erupted after members of the Mahdi army Shia militia ambushed a UK military patrol. It was alleged that some Iraqis were captured and taken back to a British base where they were supposedly tortured and murdered. The claims were subsequently found to be fictitious by the al-Sweady inquiry in 2014.
The first charge relates to a press conference held by Martyn Day at the Law Society in 2008 at which allegations were first made in public that soldiers had killed, tortured and mistreated Iraqi detainees. The prosecution says that at that point it was “improper” for the lawyers to make such claims.
Their statment included the assertion that the supposed murders of Iraqis bore comparison with the US army massacre at My Lai during the Vietnam war where hundreds of villagers were killed. Dutton said:“Mr Day and Ms Malik knew well that they could not be certain of what was said at the press conference.”
The trial may break new legal ground, potentially setting limits on the extent to which solicitors need to prove allegations to their own satisfaction before they can bring them to court.
One of the main points of contention is over the release of an Iraqi document known as the OMS detainee list, which revealed that those captured were Mahdi army fighters and not local farmers or civilians.
OMS stands for the “Office of the martyr al-Sadr”, who was a Shia leader. It was written in Arabic and subsequently translated on behalf of Leigh Day.
The SRA maintains that the law firm failed between 2007 and 2013 to hand over the OMS list to the inquiry and the high court. Leigh Day has questioned whether the Ministry of Defence (MoD) already had the list. It is alleged that Leigh Day may have received it as early as 2004 without initially being aware of it.
The charges also relate to what are said to be “improper fee-sharing arrangements” between Leigh Day and an Iraqi intermediary, Mazin Yunus, who helped organise Iraqi witnesses. Day and Malik are charged with authorising £75,000 in referral fees to Yunus, which were said to be banned by solicitors’ regulations.
Dutton said Leigh Day’s failure to keep proper records was “disastrous”. Documents that came in were not shared with Phil Shiner, of Public Interest Law (PIL), with whom the Iraqi cases were being coordinated. “Leigh Day did not properly record the provenance of the documents they received,” Dutton said. “They did not keep in hard copy form documents which had been held electronically. PIL did not receive the OMS list until 2013.”
Leigh Day received a total of £9.5m in fees from all its Iraqi claims, the tribunal was told.
Emails in Leigh Day’s own internal correspondence referred to the paying of “bribes”, although the firm disputes that the word was meant in the sense of corrupting evidence.
Dutton told the tribunal: “[Leigh Day] should not have continued to act for the clients when they had evidence that not only were their clients members of a militia associated with the Mahdi army and pursuing dishonest claims for improper purposes, but which indicated that the clients and agent were being manipulated, threatened and blackmailed by a client, Khudur al-Sweady (KAS). There was evidence that KAS was a senior member of the Mahdi army.
“In endorsing or adopting his clients’ accounts, Mr Day was conspicuously alleging that up to 30 members if the British army were involved in a cover-up.”
Dutton continued: “Even after Martyn Day and Sapna Malik realised [by May 2013] the claims were dishonest, they sought settle them rather than simply ceasing to act [for the claimants].” Leigh Day finally stopped acting for the detainees in January 2015.
Leigh Day and its three solicitors all deny any wrongdoing. The hearing continues.
