Lawyer Rajiv Menon faces contempt charges for reminding a jury of its independence in the Palestine Action case, prompting alarm that if “lawyers begin to self-censor … the right to a fair trial is placed at risk.” Dania Akkad reports.
Defend Our Juries at Trafalgar Square in London on April 11. (Steve Eason, Flickr, CC BY-NC 4.0)
By Dania Akkad
Declassified UK
Contempt of court proceedings against a top human rights barrister are having a “chilling effect” across the British bar, leading lawyers tell Declassified.
Rajiv Menon KC is accused of violating the judge’s orders in the trial of six Palestine Action activists who broke into an Israeli-owned arms factory near Bristol in 2024 at the height of the Gaza genocide.
[See: Craig Murray: The Morass of Injustice]
Menon is alleged, in part, to have breached the judge’s direction that lawyers were not permitted in their closing speeches to invite the jury to acquit on the basis of conscience.
The barrister reportedly told the jury about the Bushell case, a landmark ruling from 1670 which established the independence of juries.
He read from a plaque at the Old Bailey which commemorates the jury in that case saying it “established the right of juries to give their verdict according to their convictions.”
Three judges on the court of appeal are currently considering whether the case against Menon should move ahead after his lawyers put forward a challenge in a hearing last week.
Reporting restrictions prevented journalists from covering his case for the first few months, and have only now begun to be lifted.
The proceedings against Menon, who has previously worked on inquiries into Grenfell Tower, Stephen Lawrence and undercover policing, are believed to be unprecedented in living memory.
“I’ve been at the bar for over 50 years,” said Michael Mansfield KC, a prominent human rights barrister who has worked with Menon on several high-profile cases.
“I’m extremely concerned about the issues that are at the centre of this initiative which has never been done before as far as I’m aware, particularly the chilling effect upon the critical concept of a fiercely independent bar, fearless in its pursuit of justice on behalf of those it represents.”
Mansfield giving the first Gerry Conlon Memorial Lecture at St. Mary’s College Belfast in January 2015. (Brian O’Neill / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0)
Cases in Parallel
In February, a jury acquitted all of the activists of aggravated burglary, but failed to reach a verdict on several other charges.
The Crown Prosecution Service sought a retrial on those charges while the trial judge filed a separate complaint against Menon.
So for the past eight weeks, the hearings in Menon’s case have been heard at the Royal Courts of Justice in central London as the activists’ retrial unfolded 12 miles east at Woolwich Crown Court.
Menon’s case has been well-attended with overflow rooms required to hold dozens of spectators, including reporters from both mainstream and alternative outlets.
Yet none of the British journalists who attended have been able to report on the case after restrictions were put in place to avoid prejudicing the jury in the retrial of the activists.
That changed late on Tuesday when the jury returned after 14 hours of deliberation with its verdict, finding four of the six activists guilty of criminal damage.
One of the activists was also found guilty by a majority of 11-to-1 of inflicting grievous bodily harm on a police officer, but was cleared of the more serious charge of causing grievous bodily harm with intent.
‘Dangerous Precedent’
Placque about the Bushell case at the Old Bailey, 2016. (Paul Clarke/Flickr/Wikimedia Commons/ CC BY-SA 2.0)
Now with the allegations against Menon out in the open, lawyers tell Declassified that they fear his case is a major escalation against those representing campaign groups.
“Barristers must be free to advance their clients’ cases without fear that politically contentious arguments will expose them personally to sanction,” Paul Heron, a solicitor with the Public Interest Law Centre, said on Wednesday.
Like Mansfield, Heron has known Menon for several years. The two worked together on the undercover policing inquiry.
“I am concerned that this case risks establishing a dangerous precedent in which the boundaries of criminal defence are narrowed precisely in cases involving protest and dissent,” he said.
If lawyers begin to self-censor for fear of contempt proceedings, Heron said, the right to a fair trial is placed at risk.
“Courts should protect independent advocacy, not create a chilling effect around politically sensitive defences,” he said.
“This should concern the entire legal profession, the Palestine solidarity movement and indeed the whole of the working-class movement.”
Before the closing arguments in the retrial, five of the defendants dismissed their lawyers, including Menon, and represented themselves.
They reportedly said they felt their lawyers were no longer able to represent them as a result of “decisions made by the court.”
Charlotte Head, one of the defendants whom Menon likened to a suffragette in the first trial, told the jury in her closing statement: “It might seem odd that I’m now speaking to you from out here, instead of in the dock – trust me it’s odd for me too.
“Sadly, despite how unbelievably kind and smart and wise my barristers are… I no longer feel like they are permitted to represent me in a way that does us all justice,” she said.
The proceedings against Menon — and concerns over their impact — come as the Labour government has moved to scrap jury trials for offences that carry a sentence of less than three years.
The government has said the changes will clear a massive backlog of cases in the system while legal professionals say the change could, among other concerns, risk public confidence in the justice system.
Dania Akkad is an investigative journalist. She has won awards for her reporting on women’s rights in the Middle East, Saudi Arabian dissidents and California’s lettuce industry. She started her career covering crime and agribusiness at daily newspapers in California, and then reported from Syria as a freelance journalist before the war, including investigating the 2005 suicide bombing in Amman that killed members of her family. She served most recently as senior investigations editor at Middle East Eye.
This article is from Declassified UK.
Views expressed in this article and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
