There are all kinds of sh*ts out there. Many from the Left. Phil Shiner would, to my mind, be at the top of that heap.
He called himself a human rights lawyer. There was very little human about him as he was sentenced for making false claims of abuse made against British troops fighting in Iraq.
Phil Shiner outside court and Kelvin MacKenzie inset
PA
He was struck off by the Solicitors Regulation Authority in 2017 for pursuing false torture and murder allegations against British troops.
Shiner, 67, ran a law firm in Birmingham. A lengthy inquiry into Shiner's work and wider allegations of abuse at the hands of British soldiers established "beyond doubt" that all the most serious allegations had been found to be "wholly without foundation and entirely the product of deliberate lies”
Yesterday his lies caught up with him at Southwark Crown Court as he pleaded guilty to fraudulently obtaining £200,000 from legal aid authorities and used the money to press the case against wholly innocent soldiers.
What is equally shocking as the evidence is the sentence he received from Judge Christopher Hehir. All he received was a two-year suspended sentence. How does he justify a sentence more appropriate for a shoplifting offence?
I would have thought at least seven years. There appeared to be three main strands to the judge’s thinking.
1) That the judge had received good character references. Hope that didn’t include Starmer. We should be told.
2) That, allegedly, according to the judge Shiner allowed his enthusiasm for the cases to get the better of his judgment. That is bollocks. I think he did it for the money and for the fame. One year he was named human rights lawyer of the year.
3) The judge noted his age and that he wasn’t in good health. So what? He didn’t seem to care a damn about the mental and physical state of the soldiers who were pursued by his law firm.
Shiner was declared bankrupt in 2017 with the court extending the period by five years after Shiner was found to have given nearly £500,000 in assets to family members before making the declaration to be unable to pay £.5million to creditors.
A sh*t of mammoth proportion and yet he will live out his days not in a cell but I imagine going on country strolls although, as with all defendants, I saw in photos outside the court, he had a walking stick. It’s obligatory don’t you know.
The prosecution should appeal this ludicrous sentence. It sends a shocking message.
It makes me sick.
