Category: News

John Benson QC and Salma Lalani successfully defended a young man charged with murder at The Old Bailey recently.  Jordan Archambie was one of five men indicted for the murder of Raja Ali by stabbing in September 2016.  The prosecution alleged that Mr Archambie and three other accused were members of a drug gang and that the deceased was the senior figure in a rival drug gang.  The fifth accused was alleged to have set up the attack by arranging to meet the deceased at a certain time and place in Dagenham – information which was then passed to the other defendants.  The prosecution alleged that Archambie had a knife and was responsible for the killing.  The challenges in the case increased when two of the co-defendants sought to blame Archambie.  CCTV captured much of the incident and, so the prosecution asserted, showed Archambie with a knife.  At the conclusion of a seven week trial Jordan Archambie was acquitted of murder – a verdict which demonstrated that the jury could not be sure that he had a knife.  He was convicted of manslaughter and of violent disorder on his own admission.

Ariane Adam has returned to chambers having worked at the legal action charity Reprieve between September 2016 and June 2017. Ariane led Reprieve’s work in Malawi assisting prisoners benefiting from the decision in Kafantayeni & Others v The Attorney General of Malawi (Constitutional Case No. 12 of 2005), by which the mandatory death sentence was ruled unconstitutional. She worked with the Malawi Human Rights Commission, the Legal Aid Bureau and other local partners to secure new sentences for 51 prisoners; 24 of these individuals received custodial sentences that led to their immediate release.

Ariane further identified and advised Reprieve on opportunities to support regional efforts to abolish the death penalty in Malawi and Uganda. She represented the organisation in high level advocacy meetings with governments, intergovernmental bodies and other actors. She also facilitated the provision of training to regional actors and NGOs on minimum standards on the application of the death penalty, mental health as mitigation, and engagement with human rights instruments.

Ariane will continue to assist Reprieve in developing training materials for advocates and human rights defenders in South and East African countries, whilst continuing to accept instructions in the areas of immigration and asylum, housing, community care, employment and discrimination, and international human rights.

Members of the 1MCB housing team have been helping with the response to the Grenfell Tower tragedy.  Nick Bano has written about Grenfell for The Justice Gap.

There is still a need for volunteers – please register here if you are a lawyer with expertise in housing, employment, immigration, welfare benefits, criminal law, personal injury, inquests, fire regulations, building controls, health & safety, or public law.

Michael Chambers represented a defendant who had been targeted by the vigilante group ‘Dark Justice’.  The defendant – a gay man – had been drawn into conversations with members of the group on the dating app Grindr.  The group engaged him in explicit conversations, posing as a 14-year-old, and arranged to meet him.  The group then used threatening and intimidating language and filmed his confession.  The police were called and arrested the defendant.

Following a one-week trial at Blackfriars Crown Court the Defendant, a 32-year-old man with no previous convictions, wept in the dock when he heard the unanimous ‘not guilty’ verdict.

Chambers is very sad to announce the recent death of Patricia Farnon. Pat joined 1MCB Chambers in 2013 and prior to that had been a member of Tooks Chambers, and before that a tenant at 1 Pump Court.

After being called to the Bar in 1986, Pat practised mainly in crime for the first seven years of her career.  Thereafter, she specialised in family law, predominantly care proceedings, representing parents, grandparents, guardians, older children, interveners and local authorities.  Throughout her career Pat dealt with many long-running and complex cases, often involving thorny family backgrounds, serious allegations or international aspects.  Pat was deeply committed to the publicly funded Bar, and to providing a first-class service to every client, whether lay or professional, regardless of their background or means.  She was especially well-known at the family Bar for her empathy and compassion, and was frequently asked to represent clients with mental health issues, personality disorders or learning disabilities who required particularly sensitive representation.

Away from work, Pat was also great company, and much loved by us for her frankness, keen wit, sense of humour and generosity.

We have lost a great friend and colleague and offer our many condolences to her family at this difficult time.

On Tuesday, 13 June 2017 the retrial in the case of Jovica Stanišić and Franko Simatović will open before the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals in The Hague, Netherlands. Iain Edwards is instructed as counsel defending Mr Stanišić, who was the head of the Serbian state security service within the Ministry of Internal Affairs between 1991 and 1998 and is charged with persecution, murder, deportation and forcible transfer as crimes against humanity, and murder as a war crime. Mr Stanišić is being retried after he was acquitted on all counts before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. The case is temporally and geographically broad in scope, alleging crimes committed against Croat, Bosnian Muslim, Bosnian Croat and other non-Serb civilian populations within large areas of Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina during the Balkan wars between 1991 and 1995.

R v K, Blackfriars Crown Court, May 2017

David Parvin successfully defended a client charged with serious allegations of historic child sex abuse dating back to the 1980s. The Crown’s case, which was prosecuted by queen’s counsel, relied on evidence of the initial complaint made during the complainant’s ABE interview. However, through careful cross-examination of the complainant and other prosecution witnesses, David was able to highlight significant inconsistencies that ultimately undermined the reliability of the evidence. The jury returned unanimous not guilty verdicts.

Gwawr Thomas returns to chambers following her secondment to Onyango & Co. Advocates in Kampala, Uganda.   Gwawr was attached to the firm’s public interest litigation department, which enjoys a formidable caseload of human rights and constitutional law matters and a particular reputation for its high profile work with Uganda’s LGBTI community.

Gwawr worked on a number of important constitutional petitions and public interest cases, including

• a claim seeking redress for the human rights violations suffered by the indigenous Batwa people, who were forcibly displaced from their ancestral forest lands in order to create the Bwindi Impenetrable and Mgahinga national parks and the Echuya forest reserve;
• a petition challenging the constitutionality of the Anti Pornography Act 2014, the enactment of which led to widespread public undressing of women deemed to be inappropriately dressed;
• a claim arising from Uganda’s failure to execute the international arrest warrant outstanding against Omar Al-Bashir, when he was on Ugandan soil to attend the 2016 presidential inauguration;
• a class action brought on behalf of 98 women who were abducted from IDP camps and forced to become ‘wives’ to LRA commanders during the conflict in northern Uganda;
• a petition challenging the compatibility of provisions of the Public Order Management Act 2013 – giving the police wide powers to disperse public meetings – with the right to freedom of speech;
• a challenge to provisions within the HIV and AIDS Prevention and Control Act 2014 which permit disclosure of HIV test results to third parties.

Together with colleagues at the firm, Gwawr was also tasked with conducting an independent investigation into the break in at Human Rights Awareness and Promotion Forum (HRAPF)’s premises, during which a security guard was killed. HRAPF had challenged the legality of Uganda’s Anti Homosexuality Act 2014 before the East African Court of Justice.

Iain Edwards will speak at a Hague Project Peace and Justice conference on 22nd May.  Iain will draw on his experiences as defence counsel in international criminal tribunals to address the conference on a new Syrian justice project called the International Impartial and Independent Mechanism, and about proposals for a reformed model of international criminal procedure that better combines common law and Romano-Germanic systems of criminal justice.

Ariane Adam is in Athens this week (22-26 May) volunteering for the Immigration Law Practitioners’ Association Legal Support Project for refugees. The project is a four-month pilot from April to July 2017 to provide legal advice and support to refugees and Greek lawyers. In the current crisis Greek lawyers are incredibly overstretched and the majority of refugees do not receive advice or representation before receiving the initial decision on their claim. If their claim is refused there is an exceedingly long delay in processing appeals. Ariane will be assisting in preparing the first stages of the asylum claim, training and building capacity for Greek lawyers, and developing remote support services.

A team of 1MCB barristers (James Murray-Smith, Michael Chambers, Anna Watterson, David Parvin, Bernadette Smith, Nick Bano and Michael Sprack) and family members took part in a 60-mile sponsored bike ride in Hertfordshire on 7th May 2017.

The team was raising money for Evolve Foundation for International Legal Assistance. Evolve is a barrister-led international organisation that improves access to justice, builds capacity within the legal profession through education and training, and promotes fairness, efficiency and integrity within the criminal justice system of Uganda. So far it has assisted almost 500 individuals facing or convicted of a capital offence in sentencing hearings or appeals against conviction as well as pioneering  the first pilot scheme of pre-sentence and social inquiry reports in Uganda.

Donations are still very welcome – please visit our JustGiving page.