Phil Shiner

He was struck off the roll of solicitors in England and Wales in 2017 over misconduct relating to false abuse claims against British troops.

[9] He claimed that "UK soldiers had captured, tortured and murdered innocent Iraqi civilians after the Battle of Danny Boy near Amara in 2004".

[9] In 2014, a report by the Al-Sweady Inquiry showed that the dead "had been members of the Mahdi army militia, who ambushed a British patrol and were killed in exchanges of gunfire.

[9] Shiner was charged before the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal but did not attend its two-day hearing, after telling it in writing that "he was unwell and could not afford to pay for a defence lawyer".

[9] Andrew Tabachnik, prosecuting for the Solicitors Regulation Authority, said that "Shiner's defence to the dishonesty charges ... was effectively: 'I was not in full control of my mental faculties at this time and I didn't know right from wrong and what I am doing.

Shiner was alleged to have failed to disclose to the Legal Aid Agency that he had engaged in cold-calling to solicit cases and had paid referral fees to agents in Iraq.

It was also alleged that he committed fraud by false representation by providing an ‘untrue and misleading’ response to a question from the Solicitors Regulation Authority.

[9] About a week later Britain's Defence Secretary Michael Fallon announced that Ihat would soon be shut down, largely due to the exposing of Shiner's "dishonesty".

[9]Shiner's disgrace also resulted in criticism by former army officers of Baroness Shami Chakrabarti, the Labour Party's shadow attorney general.

Johnny Mercer MP, a retired Army captain, criticised her for "an almost child-like understanding of military operations" and for "trying to retrospectively apply European Human Rights Law to the battlefield".