Sir Keir Starmer acted on behalf of an extremist Islamic group seeking to overturn a ban on its activities in Germany, The Sunday Telegraph has revealed.
The Labor leader led a team of lawyers claiming that Berlin’s ban on Hizb ut-Tahrir was a violation of the group’s rights to freedom of religion and expression.
The QC applied to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in June 2008, a year after the Conservatives first began demanding that the Labor government ban the group. David Cameron told the House of Commons that the group had called for the deaths of Jews “wherever they are found”, and “poisoned 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 on such issues in government, including the prospect of banning specific groups such as Hizb ut-Tahrir.
Priti Patel, the former home secretary, said: “Hizb ut-Tahrir is an Islamist extremist group that celebrates terror attacks and seeks to establish a caliphate. That someone who wants to be Prime Minister would go out of his way to bring a case to defend him is simply incomprehensible and speaks volumes about Sir Keir’s worldview.”
Labor said Sir Keir continued to prosecute “terrorists linked to Hizb ut-Tahrir and led the first-ever prosecution of al-Qaeda” as director of public prosecutions, months after he led the Hizb ut-Tahrir case treated.
A Labor source added: “To suggest that the person who prosecuted the airline liquid bomb plotters is anything other than cracking down on terrorism is ridiculous and shows how desperate today’s failed Tories are.”
Never represented the group
Conservative ministers are currently reviewing the case for banning 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 a call for “jihad.” Adam Holloway, a Conservative member of the home affairs committee, said the revelation raised questions about “what factors.” [Sir Keir] will be taken into account by the government when it comes to making judgments about banning these types of groups.”
The decision ultimately issued by the ECtHR in June 2012 rejected arguments initially put forward by Sir Keir that Germany’s ban on the group violated human rights, and declared the application inadmissible. In July 2008, a month after the application was made, Sir Keir was announced as director of public prosecutions by Gordon Brown’s government. He took up the role later that year, which meant he never represented Hizb ut-Tahrir at an oral hearing.
In the ECtHR’s formal decision, the Strasbourg judge noted that the group’s spokesperson in Germany had “repeatedly justified suicide bombings killing civilians in Israel” and that neither Hizb ut-Tahrir nor the spokesperson “dissociated themselves from this position during the proceedings before the court”.
Under a “taxi rank” rule, attorneys for hire are intended to take the first case that comes along, but there are specific exceptions to that. These exceptions include ‘international work’, as set out in the rules of the Bar Standards Board at the time Sir Keir acted on behalf of Hizb ut-Tahrir in their case challenging the German government at the ECtHR in Strasbourg.
This means that lawyers can reject cases where the work “involves matters or proceedings substantially taking place or contemplated outside England and Wales and…to be substantially carried out outside England and Wales”. They may also turn down cases on the grounds that they are too busy with other work to do what is required of them.
An announcement on Hizb ut-Tahrir’s website on 25 June 2008 stated: “HT (Hizb ut-Tahrir) legal team led by Keir Starmer QC has highlighted the following points in the submission.”
These points include “the silencing of the HT’s re-expression of its views in public in Germany, despite the HT being widely known to be a non-violent political party based on Islam.”
The Labor spokesman said: “Keir Starmer and the Labor Party he leads have made it clear that those who incite hatred or glorify terrorism must face the full force of British law.
“Labour has repeatedly warned that there is a gap in the law around tackling hateful extremism, and we continue to call for tougher national action against hate crime. There is no place for threatening or extremist behavior on Britain’s streets.”
Calls on Britain to ban the group
Sir Tony Blair vowed to ban extremist groups such as Hizb ut-Tahrir after the July 7, 2005 bombings, saying: “The rules of the game have changed.” But the ban never became a reality. Lord Reid of Cardowan, Labour’s former home secretary, said there was insufficient evidence for such a measure.
Cameron also failed to deliver on his promise to ban the group, which remains banned in a range of Arab and Asian states.
After the October 7 attacks, prominent British members of Hizb ut-Tahrir appeared to celebrate Hamas’s atrocities in events and online posts, despite the group previously insisting it “does not promote fear, crime or terrorism.”
When asked about the statements, the group said: “We do not support the Hamas group, but the people of Palestine.” It added: “We do not encourage people to take similar actions, but instead want a political change so that the resources of Muslim countries are used to liberate and save the besieged people of Palestine.”
In October, Sir Mark Rowley, the commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, suggested that the government could consider banning Hizb ut-Tahrir, “whose protests have caused significant concern”.
He said: “They are banned in Germany. They are also banned in most of the Muslim world. There are frameworks that are in some ways more assertive than ours. There are lessons to be learned. But that is up to the politicians and parliament to draw the line.”
Last month, Hizb ut-Tahrir accused Sir Keir in a speech of “parroting several myths that support key Zionist talking points.”