by Sir Keir Starmer acted on behalf of an extremist Islamist group seeking to overturn a ban imposed on its activities in Germany, The Sunday Telegraph can reveal.
The Labor leader led a team of lawyers who claimed that the banning of Hizb ut-Tahrir in Berlin violated the group’s rights to freedom of religion and expression.
The KC applied to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in June 2008, a year after the Conservatives began demanding that the Labor government ban the group. David Cameron told the House of Commons that the group had called for Jews to be killed “wherever they were found” and was “poisoning the minds of young people”, claims denied by Hizb ut-Tahrir.
Conservative MPs said the revelation raised questions about the approach Sir Keir would take to these issues in Government, including the prospect of banning specific groups such as Hizb ut-Tahrir.
Priti Patel, former home secretary, said: “Hizb ut-Tahrir is an Islamist extremist group that celebrates terrorist attacks and seeks to establish a caliphate. “For someone who aspires to be Prime Minister to go out of his way to take a case to defend himself is, frankly, unacceptable and says a lot about Sir Keir’s worldview.”
The Labor Party said Sir Keir went on to prosecute “terrorists with links to Hizb ut-Tahrir and led the first prosecution of al-Qaeda” as director of public prosecutions, months after taking on the Hizb ut-Tahrir case.
A Labor source added: “To suggest that the person who prosecuted the airline liquid bomb plotters is anything other than tough on terrorism is ridiculous and shows how desperate today’s failed Conservatives are.”
He never represented the group.
Conservative ministers are currently reviewing the case to ban Hizb ut-Tahrir after prominent members of the group described the October 7 massacre of Israelis as “good news,” and a march organized by the group included calls for “jihad.” ”. Adam Holloway, Conservative member of the Home Affairs Committee, said the disclosure raised questions about “what factors [Sir Keir] “We will take that into account in government when it comes to making judgments about banning groups like this.”
The decision eventually delivered by the ECtHR in June 2012 rejected arguments initially put forward by Sir Keir that Germany’s banning of the group violated his human rights and declared the application inadmissible. In July 2008, a month after submitting the application, Gordon Brown’s government announced Sir Keir as Director of Public Prosecutions. He took office that same year, meaning he never represented Hizb ut-Tahrir at an oral hearing.
In the ECtHR’s formal decision, the Strasbourg judge noted that the group’s spokesman in Germany had “repeatedly justified suicide attacks that killed civilians in Israel” and that neither Hizb ut-Tahrir nor the spokesperson “distanced themselves from this position during the procedure before the court”.
Under a “taxi line” rule, attorneys available for hire must take the first case that comes along, but that is subject to specific exceptions. Those exceptions include “international work”, as it was described in the Bar’s rules at the time Sir Keir acted on behalf of Hizb ut-Tahrir in the case of him challenging the German government before the ECtHR in Strasbourg.
This means that solicitors could reject cases where the work “relates to matters or proceedings which substantially arise or are contemplated outside England and Wales and… must be substantially carried out outside England and Wales”. They may also reject cases on the basis that they are too busy with other work to do what would be required of them.
An advertisement published on the Hizb ut-Tahrir website on 25 June 2008 said: “The HT (Hizb ut-Tahrir) legal team led by Keir Starmer QC has highlighted the following points in the submission.”
Those points included “HT’s silencing of public re-expression of its views in Germany even though it is well known that HT is a non-violent political party based on Islam.”
The Labor spokesman said: “Keir Starmer and the Labor Party he leads have been clear that those who incite hatred or glorify terrorism must face the full force of British law.
“The Labor Party has repeatedly warned that there is a gap in the law to tackle hate extremism, and we continue to call for tougher national action on hate crime. “There is no place for threatening or extremist behavior on the streets of Britain.”
Call on the UK to ban the group
Sir Tony Blair promised to ban extremist groups such as Hizb ut-Tahrir after the 7 July 2005 attacks, saying: “The rules of the game have changed.” But the ban never materialized, and Lord Reid of Cardowan, a former Labor home secretary, said there was insufficient evidence for such a move.
Cameron also failed to deliver on his promise to ban the group, which remains banned in a number of Arab and Asian states.
Following the October 7 attacks, prominent members of Hizb ut-Tahrir based in the United Kingdom appeared to celebrate the atrocities carried out by Hamas, in events and online posts, even though the group had previously insisted that “ “It does not promote fear, crime or terrorism.”
When asked about the statements, the group said: “We do not support the Hamas group, but we support the people of Palestine.” He added: “We do not encourage people to take similar actions, but rather we want a political change so that the resources of Muslim countries are used to liberate and rescue the besieged people of Palestine.”
In October, Sir Mark Rowley, commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, suggested that the Government could consider banning Hizb ut-Tahrir, “whose protests caused deep concern”.
He said: “They are banned in Germany. They are also banned in most of the Muslim world. There are frameworks that are more assertive in some aspects than ours. There are lessons to be learned. But that is up to politicians and Parliament to draw the line.”
Last month, Hizb ut-Tahrir accused Sir Keir of having “parroted several myths that underpin key Zionist talking points” in a speech.
