The Guardian view on Phil Shiner: bad man, vital job
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Version 0 of 1. An argument often made by populists is that human rights law is a way of deliberately weakening the state’s ability to defend its citizens against threats, real or imagined, such as terrorism or migration. It is part of the narrative of victimhood on which Donald Trump built his presidential campaign. It is an easy way to vilify a minority. Theresa May is one of several European leaders to jump aboard the populist wagon with criticisms of her own against the UK Human Rights Act, a move that risks lending a veneer of legitimacy to the populist charge. Almost 60 years after the European convention on human rights was adopted as a bulwark against tyranny, it may never have been in greater need of robust defence. In that context, the offences of Phil Shiner, the human rights lawyer who has just been struck off by the solicitors’ disciplinary tribunal, are worse even than they appear at first sight. It is hard to comprehend the nightmare faced by British soldiers he wrongly accused of torture and murder in Iraq. But he did not only fail those he traduced in court. He failed Iraqis who believed they had a case; he failed genuine victims of abuse who will face a harder fight in future. And his dishonesty and deception, and the bringing of baseless cases, risks tainting the whole case for human rights. But he also uncovered some terrible episodes of brutality and unlawful killing by British soldiers during the Iraq war and its aftermath. Men are not “good or bad but are good and bad”, said Robert Penn Warren in All the King’s Men, and without his cussed, abrasive, alienating determination, there might never have been a proper inquiry into the death of Baha Mousa, the hotel worker so beaten up by so many soldiers in British army custody in Basra in September 2003 that his body had 93 injuries. Without him, the soldiers, and those officers who knew about the abuse but stayed silent, would never have been held to account. And while an absurd number of cases were brought, many of them improperly, it is also true that more than 300 of them did result in compensation payments. Others led to service disciplinary hearings. Phil Shiner betrayed the standards of his profession and he besmirched the integrity of Britain’s armed forces, but he also brought justice to victims, and he threw light on grave flaws in the way soldiers were trained and led in the haste to go to war in 2003. Politicians now queue to denounce “spurious” and “vexatious” lawyers. But there is enough hard evidence to know that the pursuit of justice must not be halted: cases like that of 15-year-old Kareem Ali, thrown into a canal and left to drown. Other cases indicate there was sometimes a readiness to break all conventions governing battlefield conduct even knowing that what they were doing was wrong. Fighting this kind of abuse is not spurious or vexatious. It is a matter of justice. It is also a simple question of prevention. Stopping the abuse would silence the lawyers. The government would rather just silence the lawyers. The Ministry of Defence seems to be deliberately seeking to chill future claims. Another human interest law firm is being pursued for what observers describe as a technical oversight. The prime minister and the defence secretary announced at last autumn’s Conservative party conference that they plan to enable the military to opt out from the European convention on human rights during future conflicts. Naturally, ministers stand up for British soldiers. But no one is above the law. And if the government, trying to stop victims of abuse suing the MoD, also stands between young servicemen and women and their right to hold to account the ministry that sent them to war, in the words of the Chilcot report, with “serious equipment shortfalls”, there are plenty who would think that too high a price to pay. As much as has been the case at any time in the past 60 years, we all need to be able to challenge an overmighty state. |