Culture: hanging by a thread

By Richard North - February 15, 2024

One of the disturbing characteristics of modern society and the way it is developing is that there seem to be no moral certainties any more, within civil society, within government and within vital institutions such as the courts.

One example of this was raging around Twitter all yesterday – the extraordinary story of senior deputy district judge Tanweer Ikram (pictured) who had presided over the cases of Heba Alhayek, Pauline Ankunda, and Noimutu Olayinka Taiwo.

These were the three women who had been observed at a pro-Palestinian demonstration in central London, displaying stylised images of paragliders, a mere seven days after October’s attack by Hamas on Israel.

I remember seeing the images on Twitter at the time and their presence was tied in with the ongoing controversy on police double standards. No action was taken at the time by the Met Police and it was only after a public outcry that the police eventually stirred themselves into investigating what was obviously a breach of the Terrorism Act – glorifying acts of terrorism.

So it came to pass that the BBC dutifully reported that the loathsome trio had been found guilty of charges under the Terrorism Act.

But said judge Ikram, delivering his verdict, “I want to be clear, there’s no evidence that any of these defendants are supporters of Hamas, or were seeking to show support for them”. He thus “decided not to punish” the convicts (described as “defendants” by the BBC) and handed them each a 12-month conditional discharge.

It later emerged that Ikram had shared and “liked” an online posting by the pro-Palestinian barrister Sham Uddin condemning “Israeli terrorists in the United Kingdom, the United States, and of course Israel”.

Ikram seems to be rather coy about his origins, although he is celebrated on the Rochdale-based website 101 Pakistanis as one of those “mammoth personalities and their successors who migrated from Pakistan and made their mark on the world”.

Talking of his work as a district judge, though, he stresses the need to “know your law” and, “as importantly, be good at handling people and juggling the volume of work, never forgetting that fairness and justice always comes first”.

Now, in the pursuit of “fairness and justice”, which some feel had slipped down the list of priorities somewhat, The Times is telling us that Ikram may now face disciplinary action, after judicial guidance issued last year stated that judges known to have strong views should consider whether to hear a case.
On Wednesday, senior legal figures including a former home secretary and a Jewish campaign group, criticised Ikram and called for a review of the sentencing.

Downing Street, we learn, had referred the case to the Attorney General, describing the sentencing decision as “deeply troubling”. A source there says: “Serious questions are being raised in government on how a judge posting this online was able to preside over this landmark case and what this means for the sentencing decision”.

As coda, it turns out that one of the convicts, Heba Alhayek, was an asylum seeker who hails from Gaza as a one-time graduate of the Islamic University of Gaza (now re-modelled by the IDF).

She has recently won the Palestine Book Award for her book Sambac Under Unexpected Skies which, we are told, “talks about a deported woman’s memories and her longing for her homeland, Gaza, in addition to the Palestinian women’s resistance”.

Despite this, it appears that Alhayek was granted asylum in the UK “because her family were critical of Hamas”, although the date this was granted is unclear. In 2015, though, she was identified as a student of English literature at the Islamic University of Gaza.

Then, she seems to have been taking an active part in local politics, working for an outfit called “Aid Watch Palestine”, aiming to train a group of writers who can collect stories about Israeli aggression in Gaza that can be shared with the rest of the world.

Now this Palestinian activist pops up in London at a pro-Palestinian demonstration, wearing a badge that glorifies Palestinian terrorism, and judge Ikram thinks “there’s no evidence” that she was a supporter of Hamas, or was seeking to show support for them.

As to judge Ikram, I would put him down as an example of the corruption at the heart of the British establishment, where the core values of English society are no longer upheld and we see a gradual, inexorable decline in standards – with almost all the instances related to immigrants or people of recent immigrant stock.

Sometimes, it is corrupt driving examiners, visa fraud or, more recently NHS nurses being investigated for ‘industrial-scale’ qualifications fraud, where a scam has been identified that involves more than 700 healthcare workers who used proxies to pass test in Nigeria enabling them to work in the UK.

But top of the CPS list is the case of a barrister and part-time immigration tribunal judge along with other lawyers who have been found guilty of defrauding the Legal Aid Agency by falsely claiming defence legal costs

The judge, Rasib Ghaffar, conspired to inflate legal fees and work claimed for in 2011 and 2012 together with Gazi Khan, a legal clerk, Azar Khan, a solicitor advocate and Joseph Kyeremeh, a solicitor.

In this case, defendants in criminal proceedings instructed solicitors and counsel to represent them privately in criminal proceedings and, following their acquittals, successfully applied to the courts for Defendant’s Costs Orders (DCO).

These orders enabled their instructed solicitors to claim payments of their own costs and disbursements (which included counsel’s agreed fees) from central government funds and in this case, the CPS focussed on four claims, arising from the legal costs of four defendants who were acquitted.

These defendants were then able to apply for the legal costs of their defence to be paid by the taxpayer. These four claims totalled £1,856,584, of which £469,477 (25%) was paid out.

Gazi Khan, the leader in this criminal operation worked as a clerk to Shadid Rashid, providing legal costs services to several solicitor firms. He has now been convicted of fraud offences relating to fraudulent defence cost orders.

Azar Khan was the principal partner in City Law Solicitors Ltd and according to evidence gathered by the prosecution, the firm started work on the case resulting in the claims on 1 July 2011, about 10 weeks before it concluded, yet claimed to have carried out over 500 hours work, costing over £162,000.

The firm’s claim also falsely backdated the work it had said it had done to include a long period when it was not instructed to represent any defendant, resulting in a payment of £93,000 from the taxpayer.

Joseph Kyeremeh was a principal partner in the same law firm. His legal work resulted in a claimed relating to 650 hours work, at a value of over £176,000, with £60,000 coming from public funds.

The defendant in this trial, Ghaffar, was responsible for a fee note in his name for £184,000, relating to over 350 hours of work – yet the evidence shows he had only been instructed seven days before the conclusion of the case.

After the successful prosecution, Malcolm McHaffie of the CPS said of these corrupt legal professionals: “These convicted defendants defrauded the Legal Aid Agency for their own purposes. They fraudulently took advantage of a statutory scheme which was designed to help acquitted defendants with their genuinely incurred legal costs”.

This goes to the very heart of our establishment and the deeper one digs the more that emerges, with levels of criminality which, in the past, were simply unheard of – as in the Tower Hamlets electoral fraud.

It would be wrong, of course, to argue that criminality is new, and that we have never experienced in the public domain what amounts to breaches of trust by people in positions of authority. But the impression, reinforced by the examples, is that we live in a meaner society where trust in public institutions is eroding fast.

Perceptions in this context are important, as trust requires people to believe that they are being treated fairly and honestly. Allister Heath in the Telegraph illustrates the conundrum, writing under the headline, “For the first time in my life, I’m now beginning to think Britain is finished”.

“The country’s self-image as tolerant, decent and hard-working is being smashed, he writes”, adding: “It’s only going to get worse” as he complains that our public and private institutions are broken, presided over by an incompetent, selfish and narcissistic ruling class.

Thus he writes, “Free riding, crime, disorder, fraud, littering and generalised rule-bending are rife, and all too often tolerated by apathetic citizens and an indifferent state. Britain’s residual virtues, our individualism, independence of mind, tolerance and openness, uniquely appealing features of our national character, are fading”.

We may not be entirely on the same page when it comes to the detail, but Heath is not wrong when he says that Britain is hanging by a thread.