British human rights lawyer turned Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and his controversial attorney general worked with a disgraced solicitor on a legal case that led to hundreds of British soldiers being hounded through the courts over war crimes allegations, a report states.
Sir Keir Starmer worked with Phil Shiner, the infamous leader of the now-closed ‘Public Interest Lawyers’ firm, who was struck off for misconduct in 2017 and narrowly avoided prison in 2024, court documents published by The Daily Telegraph revealed. Starmer’s work was Pro Bono — voluntary and without payment — and the case led to what has been called a “witch hunt” against British soldiers that saw them dragged through lengthy court battles thanks to a successful appeal to the European Court of Human Rights.
The case of Al-Skeini and others v Secretary of State for Defence 2007 eventually “triggered years of criminal investigations into soldiers who had been wrongly accused, at enormous cost to the taxpayer”, The Telegraph reports. The case proceeded for years after Starmer moved on, having been awarded one of the top legal jobs in Britain as director of public prosecutions the following year.
Nevertheless, former government minister and pro-veterans advocate Johnny Mercer said this was a process the Prime Minister “fought for” in his previous life as a human rights lawyer.
In one case, a British soldier was under suspicion for 13 years and had to be cleared by the investigation three times over the fatal shooting of an Iraqi schoolteacher in 2003. The teacher had been armed with an AK-47 and the British soldier was repeatedly found to have acted in legitimate self-defence. The daughter of that soldier questioned why Starmer had felt motivated to work for free on the case, The Telegraph said.
Per the report, Starmer represented a group of interveners in the case that included human rights charity the Advice on Individual Rights in Europe Centre, the Association for the Prevention of Torture, the Bar Human Rights Committee, the British Irish Rights Watch, Interrights, Justice, the Kurdish Human Rights Project, the Law Society, Liberty, and the Redress Trust. The legal, campaigning, and charity groups said they were motivated to become involved in the case over “grave concerns” about human rights and said they believed “the outcome of this appeal will have profound and lasting implications”.
A government spokesman responded to the story to emphasise that Starmer had not directly represented the Iraqi families in the case but rather had represented other interested parties. Yet the substance of the story, that Starmer had worked pro bono — and therefore voluntarily — on the case went unchallenged.
Brexit pioneer Nigel Farage responded to the report and said “Keir Starmer does not support our country, or its people. He should apologise to British soldiers for the role he played in allowing their false persecution.”
Mercer said: “It’s clear Keir Starmer was personally involved in unleashing the witch hunt against British troops that I’ve spent the last 10 years dismantling. He believes in prosecuting British soldiers so much that he insisted on doing it for free.”
Starmer went from this 2007 case to become the Director of Public Prosecutions in 2008, a role he held until 2013. Two years later he was elected a Labour Member of Parliament for a north London seat and became party leader in 2020.
Disgraced human rights lawyer Phil Shiner was handed a suspended jail sentence in 2024 for legal aid fraud. Legal Futures reported at the time that “his firm, Birmingham-based Public Interest Lawyers in Birmingham, had engaged an agent to cold call clients in Iraq and had also paid referral fees”.
His company was responsible for huge numbers of allegations against British soldiers and it was stated by a lawyer defending some of them: “As a result of Shiner’s criminal conduct, thousands of British soldiers were falsely and maliciously accused of war crimes. He instigated a witch hunt based on deceit. The accusations against British troops were totally false, and Shiner illegally pocketed millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money pursuing them.”
Robert Jenrick, then the Conservative shadow Lord Chancellor and now Reform UK Member of Parliament said of Shiner then: “Shiner’s bogus claims destroyed the lives of so many British soldiers for years”.
As reported in 2016:
Mr Shiner became known as the “scourge of the army” for his actions, and his firm was condemned by former Prime Minister David Cameron and the Ministry of Defence.
A five-year inquiry ruled in 2014 that the firm’s clients made claims that were “wholly without foundation and entirely the product of deliberate lies, reckless speculation and ingrained hostility”.
Speaking on the firm’s closure, Defence Secretary Michael Fallon said: “This is the right outcome for our armed forces, who show bravery and dedication in difficult circumstances. For too long, we’ve seen our legal system abused to impugn them falsely. We are now seeing progress and we will be announcing further measures to stamp out this practice.”