When the Lies Were Exposed, Hermer's Instinct Was to Attack the Soldiers. On 19 April 2014, a document emerged at the Al-Sweady Inquiry that ended the case. A personnel list, written in Arabic, identified nine of Richard Hermer's Iraqi clients as members of the Office of the Martyr al-Sadr, another name for the Mahdi Army, the Iran-backed militia that had ambushed British soldiers at the Battle of Danny Boy a decade earlier. The clients had claimed to be innocent farmers and labourers caught in crossfire. The document proved they were armed insurgents. The inquiry, which had already cost thirty-one million pounds, was heading toward its inevitable conclusion. The following day, Hermer wrote an email. He was not writing to the soldiers who had spent years under false accusation. He was not writing to Lance Corporal Brian Wood, who had won a Military Cross fighting the same insurgents his clients represented and who had been falsely branded a war criminal for his trouble. He was writing to comfort a junior solicitor at Leigh Day who had failed to recognise the significance of the document that had just destroyed their case. He told her she was making an extraordinary contribution to securing justice for torture victims in Iraq. He told her her work had made a real difference to people's lives. Then he added that this was not something the lead counsel for the British soldiers, or his clients, could ever say. The lead counsel for the British soldiers was Sir Neil Garnham, now a High Court judge. His clients were the men Hermer had spent years pursuing on false charges. At the moment those charges were collapsing under the weight of documentary evidence, Hermer's verdict was that the lawyers pursuing them had contributed more to society than the soldiers they had falsely accused. Documents obtained by the Daily Telegraph show Hermer also described legitimate criticism from a former SAS officer and a Conservative MP as the military establishment venting after years of facing scrutiny over Iraq. Decorated soldiers and their advocates raising concerns about a case built on lies were, in Hermer's private assessment, simply letting off steam. A further email shows him acknowledging it was inevitable that some of the Iraqi cases were going to collapse. He was not troubled by what that collapse revealed about the claims he had been advancing. He was concerned about its effect on the remaining civil cases and the likelihood of future settlements. Then there is the Shiner question. In 2015, with Phil Shiner already under investigation by the solicitors' watchdog, Hermer described him publicly as having brought extraordinarily important cases and exposed systemic use of torture by the British Army. In a private email from the same period he called Shiner an arse. In 2019, after Shiner was struck off, Hermer described his conduct as an unforgivable act of dishonesty. Shiner was later convicted of fraud. The public position shifted with the political weather. The private view had always been different. Hermer is now Attorney General. One of his primary functions is to advise on the legality of military operations. The man who decides whether British soldiers can lawfully act is the same man who, at the moment his false case against them collapsed, wrote that they had made less of a difference to people's lives than the lawyers pursuing them. Brian Wood has called him clearly unfit to remain in post. A former head of the Army says his position is untenable. The Bar Standards Board has been asked to investigate. A leading Labour peer has called him an arrogant progressive fool. Starmer has said nothing. The machine keeps running. "A personnel list, written in Arabic, identified nine of Richard Hermer's Iraqi clients as members of the Office of the Martyr al-Sadr, another name for the Mahdi Army"
