\n<\/p>\n
The prosecution of a leading human rights barrister for contempt of court over his closing speech during a trial of Palestine Action activists has left lawyers fearful of doing their job, the chair of the Criminal Bar Association (CBA) has said.<\/p>\n
Rajiv Menon KC, who was acting for the defence, is due to stand trial next week, accused of breaching the judge\u2019s directions in the trial of six people for a direct action protest at an arms factory of the Israeli subsidiary Elbit Systems UK in Filton, near Bristol, in 2024.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, senior legal figures criticised the prosecution of Menon, believed to be the first barrister to be prosecuted over remarks made during a closing speech.<\/p>\n
Riel Karmy-Jones KC, the chair of the CBA, told the online meeting: \u201cWe have heard of barristers changing their speeches or being told to change them \u2013 including in cases where no direction has been given by a judge. And that really can\u2019t be ignored, because people at the criminal bar have become uncertain and scared of what they can and can\u2019t say; scared that somehow they might be \u2013 at the end of a trial where they have faithfully represented their client themselves \u2013 facing a charge of criminal contempt.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is starting to <\/em>feel like it\u2019s about the politics of the subject matter of the trial, rather than the core principles of how a barrister represents his client.\u201d<\/p>\n Last month, the trial judge in the Palestine Action case, Mr Justice Johnson, referred the question of whether Menon should face contempt of court proceedings to another judge, Mr Justice Nicklin, who subsequently ruled that he should. It came after a previous attempt to refer Menon was overturned on appeal on procedural grounds.<\/p>\n The Labour peer and former Liberty director Shami Chakrabarti said criticising judges was a delicate and dangerous thing to do given the threats they could face but that in Menon\u2019s case they had made \u201ca terrible, capricious mistake\u201d and acted in \u201ca very chilling manner\u201d.<\/p>\n In a written message, her fellow Labour peer Helena Kennedy KC, one of the UK\u2019s most renowned criminal lawyers, described Menon\u2019s prosecution as \u201canother assault upon our justice system \u2026 [which] ought to be resisted\u201d, while the leading human rights lawyer Gareth Pierce called the prosecution \u201cterrifying\u201d.<\/p>\n Support for Menon was also conveyed by families of victims of the Hillsborough disaster, whom he represented.<\/p>\n Nicklin\u2019s court order initiating contempt proceedings said Menon was alleged to have deliberately breached Johnson\u2019s rulings and directions \u201cknowing that his conduct would create, or was capable of creating, a real risk of impeding the administration of justice.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is further alleged that, in the same speech to the jury, the respondent made statements which were capable of suggesting to the jury that the court was not impartial, in that he referred to the defendants being prevented from giving evidence about Elbit Systems, and later referred to Elbit Systems being \u2018protected\u2019 and \u2018wined and dined in the corridors of power\u2019.<\/p>\n \u201cThose statements were capable of creating the impression that the defendants had been treated unfairly and that Elbit Systems had been improperly protected in the proceedings.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The prosecution of a leading human rights barrister for contempt of court over his closing speech during a trial of Palestine Action activists has left lawyers fearful of doing their job, the chair of the Criminal Bar Association (CBA) has said. Rajiv Menon KC, who was acting for the defence, is due to stand trial<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":51382,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[919,12177,1859,15548,160,7920,1240,2128],"class_list":{"0":"post-51381","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-crime-justice","8":"tag-action","9":"tag-barristers","10":"tag-chilling","11":"tag-contempt","12":"tag-court","13":"tag-criticised","14":"tag-palestine","15":"tag-prosecution"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=51381"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51381\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/51382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=51381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=51381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=51381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}