Britain’s Attorney-General has been called “a threat to national security” and told to resign over alleged revelations over his involvement in a scandalous legal case that falsely accused British soldiers of massacring Iraqi civilians over 20 years ago.
‘Lord’ Hermer, the already-controversial Attorney-General raised to the House of Lords and to his high office from being a human rights lawyer by Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer after winning the 2024 General Election, has been reported for investigation and even told to resign after a British newspaper claimed to have seen a trove of documents pertaining to the infamous al-Sweady affair.
The legal cases known under that name, and the eventual inquiry which cleared the soldiers involved and demonstrated those making allegations were part of an Iran-backed militia and making false claims, alleged that British troops had tortured and executed Iraqi villagers in 2004. The whole affair was called “one of the most notorious witch hunts in British military history”.
One of the key lawyers involved in that process, Phil Shiner, was later struck off from the profession and convicted in criminal court for fraud. Yet in its allegations, The Daily Telegraph claims the thousands of documents reveal the now-Attorney-General’s deep involvement, which they say “stayed largely under the radar until now”.
On one hand, a spokesman for Lord Hermer has responded to these claims, stating “the suggestion attorney acted for individuals with the knowledge that their claims were false is categorically untrue”. On the other hand, the allegations appear so serious that Hermer has been referred to both the House of Lords Standards Commission and the Bar Standards Board over the matter, and a former commanding officer of Britain’s SAS special forces has called for him to resign “for the love of the country”.
According to a timeline of alleged events published by The Telegraph, after self-proclaimed Iraqi farmers claimed torture and murder by British forces, Hermer became “substantially involved” in the case and even wrote in a now-revealed 2008 email that the Iraqi allegations “are a good reminder of why I wanted to be a lawyer”.
Yet the Telegraph notes that even in the early stages of these cases, lawyers involved in pursuing them including Hermer expressed doubts about the alleged — and later disproven — massacre, with questions over why the soldiers would kill civilians when they had no motive to do so, and how something so serious had been successfully covered up within the military, despite the large numbers of people who would have had to be hushed up. In another email, it was said that Hermer himself expressed doubts about the veracity of the claims, even while pushing for the case against the British government to be pursued more assiduously.
He is said to have written: “getting the balance between making sure that the big story is out there whilst giving us some wriggle room if the killings did not in fact happen”.
The links between Hermer, these cases, and the Prime Minister go deeper than Starmer’s decision to appoint his old friend as A-G after taking power in 2024. According to subsequent claims relating to the Telegraph’s document haul, Hermer praised Starmer — himself a human rights lawyer who rose to the heady heights of Director of Public Prosecutions before entering formal politics — for what was described as pioneering “ground-breaking” legal claims that allowed Iraqis to sue British soldiers at all.
The Times of London reported that after these documents were published this week, Lord Wolfson of Tredegar, the shadow attorney-general, said Hermer should be compelled to give a “full explanation” of his involvement and implied that, given Hermer’s apparent past in suing British soldiers on behalf of Iranian-backed militants, he should now, as the government’s chief lawyer, recuse himself from certain cases. Crucially, the government is presently pursuing legal changes that critics say would make it easier for British soldiers to face legal action.
Hermer’s opposite number in the Conservative Party, shadow Attorney General Nick Timothy, said he’d referred him to the Bar Standards Board and that the revelations suggested Hermer had been involved in “serious professional misconduct” that should be investigated. Timothy wrote: “He went after British soldiers despite warnings murder allegations were false.
“He knew what he was doing: he sought “wriggle room if the killings did not happen. It says everything that Starmer made him Attorney General.”
Brexit leader Nigel Farage said he’s reported Hermer to the House of Lords’ standards commissioner and is reported to have called the human rights lawyer a “deeply unpatriotic man” and a “threat to national security”.
Those with military service have perhaps been the greatest critics of Lord Hermer in the light of the Telegraph allegations. Former junior defence minister and Army officer Johnny Mercer questioned: “Whose side is Lord Hermer actually on?
“For he has now been exposed as having actively worked with this nation’s enemies to weaken our national security… That he could not care whether he is representing “a saint or a member of al-Qaeda or the Mahdi Army” is extraordinary.”
Lieutenant Colonel Richard Williams, the former commanding officer of Britain’s elite 22 SAS special forces unit, said Hermer should resign. He wrote:
What was long suspected is now proven. Attorney General Hermer has been part of a group of ideologically-motivated, government-embedded, Human Rights lawyers that have acted in a vexatious and biased way to persecute British soldiers, not because they broke the law, but to serve some twisted anti-military, anti-British agenda.
They, their greed (the made a lot of money doing it), and their crippling ideology, have deliberately misapplied the 1988 UK Human Rights Act to British military operations in ways that not only create a never-ending conveyor belt of Veteran persecutions but also fundamentally undermine Britain’s ability to wage war and thereby defend itself. For the love of Country, he must step down.
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